See My Own Private Library.
As another unreconstructed bibliophile all I can think about this is “Dude, you’re an embarassment to us all.” Come on, just admit that you’re in love with books, your own books not ones passing through your life before returning to libraries or used bookstores. Don’t justify it by preservation, economics, community and, uh, pedagogy. Stand proud and tall and say “I’m bibliophilic and I’ve got nothing to hide!”
Then again Mr. “Benton” seems like a different kind of bibliophile than I am. I don’t spend more on books than food (even allowing for exaggeration) and am not hunting down Diderot facsimiles or water-stained volumes of Lincoln’s portraits. I do share thrill of the shipments from Edward Hamilton (in fact there's one waiting for me at the post office right now) but haven’t dealt with Daedalus in years. (A current recommendation is Book Closeouts.) It's that same fascination as with used bookstores where you never know exactly what will turn up and often at quite a bargain.
Having worked in bookstores for almost 20 years and low-level arts journalism for even longer, I’ve met a variety of bibliophiles. Some are fascinated, even strongly attracted, to the physical book, often even regardless of its subject. They know cover artists, bindings, paper weights and such. Conversely, others latch onto subjects, perhaps specific ones (I knew somebody that would buy anything about Oscar Wilde) or maybe broader (know a lot of people with collections about contemporary art). This is closer to our Mr. “Benton.” Then there are the dealers, the ones with a strong interest in the money potential; they range from those where this is almost a sideline to the more mercenary (one I worked alongside for several years was so money-oriented and shady that several publishers finally refused to deal with him).
What kind of bibliophile am I? Perhaps I’m more a reading-o-phile. The physical book isn’t terribly interesting to me. I have no interest in first editions, in fact more a contempt for the undeserved place they occupy in literary culture. Even worse from the view of most bibliophiles I much prefer paperbacks to hardcovers: They’re cheaper, lighter, don’t have easily damaged dustjackets, frequently feature corrections and additions and in general simply look nicer. But that’s a minority opinion. I’m the kind of bibliophile that just grabs whatever seems interesting and am fortunate enough (I think) to have fairly catholic tastes. There are drawbacks to this I suppose but not for me the kind of narrowly focused reading characteristic of academics. (Which is not meant as academic-bashing but purely descriptive. Didn't Robert Frost somewhere remark that scholars accumulate knowledge through discipline and systems while a poet does so like somebody walking through a field collects burrs on his clothes? I'm not even remotely a poet but otherwise tend to fit that latter.)
I started to give an example by listing (for whatever reason I'm also a list-o-phile) the books piled by my chair and computer but that seems a bit excessive. So my current and recent reading may do: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Freya Stark's The Valley of the Assassins, the most recent volume of Ultimate Spider-Man, Ben Mcintyre's The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan, Jon Stewart/Daily Show's America, MacCabe's Godard and a Wodehouse anthology.