That one week I found 4 cat coffee table books at thrift stores and now my shelf is a disaster
Last Saturday I hit the Goodwill on 8th in Portland and found "Cats in Hats" for $2, then two days later a library sale in Beaverton had "The French Cat" and a weird 1970s cat photography book I'd never seen. By Friday I had 4 new books stacked on my coffee table and my roommate said it looked like a cat museum threw up in our living room. Now I'm stuck debating whether rare finds like these belong on display or in a protective box somewhere. Do you actually leave your thrift store scores out for people to flip through, or do they go straight to the shelf?
Leaving them out for people to flip through is half the fun, even if it means a little wear and tear. A book nobody touches is just clutter with a nice cover, and those cat photo books were made to get flipped through, not sealed up. So keep the weird ones on the table and let your roommate deal with the cat museum vibe.