What the size of your book collection says about you
March 11, 2025 2:22 PM Subscribe
What the size of your book collection - potentially - says about you "Are you a minimalist or a mini-librarian? Do you let your books pile up around your home, or do you treat your collection like a carefully curated gallery of your best self? Time to find out."
This is Just for Fun - even though book ownership is ~serious business~.
Play Nice People.
For those of you who wish to go straight to book debatin' here are the categories:
I'd like to assert that ebooks also count but YMMV
This is Just for Fun - even though book ownership is ~serious business~.
Play Nice People.
For those of you who wish to go straight to book debatin' here are the categories:
- 0-5: The book monk
- 5-50: The read-and-chucker
- Exactly 42 books: The meaning of lifer
- 50-150 books: The shelf sharer
- 150-500 books: The lay librarian
- 500+ books: The tsundoku master
I'd like to assert that ebooks also count but YMMV
500 books isn't really that many.
also "Ask legendary clean-queen Marie Kondo and she'd likely disagree. For the bestselling Japanese author and her millions of global fans, less stuff = more joy,"
isn't what kondo was saying at all. Her thesis was that you should put thought into what material possessions you have not that you necessarily should have less. If all of your stuff brings you happiness, that's cool too.
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:29 PM on March 11 [38 favorites]
also "Ask legendary clean-queen Marie Kondo and she'd likely disagree. For the bestselling Japanese author and her millions of global fans, less stuff = more joy,"
isn't what kondo was saying at all. Her thesis was that you should put thought into what material possessions you have not that you necessarily should have less. If all of your stuff brings you happiness, that's cool too.
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:29 PM on March 11 [38 favorites]
I know my true form is Book Dragon.
This comic is me.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:32 PM on March 11 [16 favorites]
This comic is me.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:32 PM on March 11 [16 favorites]
Mz Kondo also recommends cutting out the pictures from your art books and only keeping the few images that 'Spark Joy' so she can (most respectfully) GET IN THE SEA. -.-
posted by Faintdreams at 2:34 PM on March 11 [25 favorites]
posted by Faintdreams at 2:34 PM on March 11 [25 favorites]
Let’s just say that pirate ebook sites, cheap storage, and a hoarding instinct have left me in no danger of running out of reading material any time soon.
posted by Lemkin at 2:36 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
posted by Lemkin at 2:36 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
500+ books: The tsundoku master
[...]You're a sensei in the way of tsundoku – the Japanese art of buying lots of books and never reading them.
I think the library I had when I was in my twenties was close to this size and I had read every single book in it. If it wasn't then I think my current (smaller) library plus the old books would add up to this. But there was a hurricane and I lost a lot. I was past the point where I could count books and just measured it in how many feet of shelves I had.
I may need to measure shelves and estimate when I get back home.
posted by egypturnash at 2:41 PM on March 11 [9 favorites]
[...]You're a sensei in the way of tsundoku – the Japanese art of buying lots of books and never reading them.
I think the library I had when I was in my twenties was close to this size and I had read every single book in it. If it wasn't then I think my current (smaller) library plus the old books would add up to this. But there was a hurricane and I lost a lot. I was past the point where I could count books and just measured it in how many feet of shelves I had.
I may need to measure shelves and estimate when I get back home.
posted by egypturnash at 2:41 PM on March 11 [9 favorites]
What if you don't bother to ever count? You just have a lot of books.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:44 PM on March 11 [13 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 2:44 PM on March 11 [13 favorites]
I just moved cross-country—2,290 miles—and gave away nearly all of my physical books except for the ones inscribed by the authors (who run the gamut from canceled to rich-from-film to dead-and-beloved and back). I was ruthless when I did it, but now that I’m back in fertile soil and feel my feet pushing back into loam, I find I can’t play right now, sorry
posted by infinitewindow at 2:46 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 2:46 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
I live inside a private library. Around 4000 books. I’m not even on that silly scale posted above, as I’m not a tsundoku master. I just love books and reading especially in certain topical areas.
posted by njohnson23 at 2:48 PM on March 11 [18 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 2:48 PM on March 11 [18 favorites]
I am a high-level lay librarian, but that might be a little bit of a misrepresentation because for several years now I have mostly been reading ebooks from the library. And buying more ebooks too. Instead of buying dead tree physical media to keep in my home. I would prefer to buy more books but I have been practicing frugality. So it's possible I'm in the top category.
posted by supermedusa at 2:53 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
posted by supermedusa at 2:53 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I'm a librarian and have adopted an increasingly ruthless, utilitarian approach to the home collection, but there are still easily 500-600 books in there at any given time. My goal is to have all only a few boxes left for the kids, however.
posted by reedbird_hill at 2:55 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
posted by reedbird_hill at 2:55 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
Topping out at 500? This is a house with 3 graduate degrees in the humanities, 500 is just the start
posted by dis_integration at 2:56 PM on March 11 [27 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 2:56 PM on March 11 [27 favorites]
We also need to open up categories!!
Shelf/helper: mostly just psychology
Nookworm: all lit all the time
LeChef: culinary or gtfo
DustyMusty: history, biographical, maps and so forth
LikeWhatEvr: magazines
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:00 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
Shelf/helper: mostly just psychology
Nookworm: all lit all the time
LeChef: culinary or gtfo
DustyMusty: history, biographical, maps and so forth
LikeWhatEvr: magazines
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:00 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
500 is a bafflingly small number to me. How do you live with that few books? I really can't imagine it.
[ What counts as a book? Game books? Cook books? I guess. Comic books? Maybe? Written notebooks? loose notes? probably not.]
I used to have many, I've been reducing for several years. Access to electronic copies helps a lot.
But I've read every one of them. I read less than I used to, but still in the dozens of books a year. Most of those are electronic now, but still a few physical ones.
posted by bonehead at 3:03 PM on March 11 [8 favorites]
[ What counts as a book? Game books? Cook books? I guess. Comic books? Maybe? Written notebooks? loose notes? probably not.]
I used to have many, I've been reducing for several years. Access to electronic copies helps a lot.
But I've read every one of them. I read less than I used to, but still in the dozens of books a year. Most of those are electronic now, but still a few physical ones.
posted by bonehead at 3:03 PM on March 11 [8 favorites]
You know all those rules that if you don't touch a thing for a year you should throw it out? Absolute nonsense when it comes to books. Since Covid I've been re-reading lots of my books; I've been glad I kept books I read 10 or 20 years ago.
We're moving, though, and I have to say that it's often clear that I'll never re-read a particular book, which is good: one less book to pack.
posted by zompist at 3:04 PM on March 11 [9 favorites]
We're moving, though, and I have to say that it's often clear that I'll never re-read a particular book, which is good: one less book to pack.
posted by zompist at 3:04 PM on March 11 [9 favorites]
My mom taught 4th grade and my grandma before her was both a teacher and elementary school principal, and my great grandmother before her was also an elementary school teacher, and all of them had hoarding issues, which meant that I grew up surrounded, quite literally, by the full output of 20th century America's middle grades books. Thousands and thousands of books. My mom kept a massive library in her classroom at school, but our house was full, too. I read... a lot of them. Voyages of Doctor Dolittle? Yep. Caddie Woodlawn? Yep. Blue Willow? Yep. Ginger Pye? Yep. All of Marguerite Henry's horse girl books? Yep and I don't even like horses. The Boxcar Childrens, The Babysitter's Clubs, the Nancies Drew and the Hardies Boy and the Goosesbump, every Judy Blume, the incredible amount of late 80s/early 90s "The [household object] That Ate My [homework/brother]" and "My [teacher/coach/principal] Is A [cryptid/alien/monster]" style output... and then even as I aged out of them I'd read whatever Scholastic had new so my mom could appropriately categorize them in her classroom library. SO MANY BOOKS. STACKS OF BOOKS. EVERYWHERE. The hallway width in our upstairs was reduced to <2 feet because of the stacks of books lining every wall.
Anyway these days I have 1 very small bookshelf and only keep things that are personally nostalgic to me or that look pretty, and everything else lives on my kindle or at the library. I love reading. Always have loved reading. But honestly 99.999% of physical books can get fucked and I'm not even sorry.
posted by phunniemee at 3:05 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
Anyway these days I have 1 very small bookshelf and only keep things that are personally nostalgic to me or that look pretty, and everything else lives on my kindle or at the library. I love reading. Always have loved reading. But honestly 99.999% of physical books can get fucked and I'm not even sorry.
posted by phunniemee at 3:05 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
Only 200 books (I just counted) but they're mostly medium-to-big art and history of design books, so they take up the wall of a bedroom. I recently gifted 3 shopping bags of old comics and graphic novels so I could move a few book piles off the floor. I wish I had a comfy reading chair.
posted by brachiopod at 3:08 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
posted by brachiopod at 3:08 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
A flooded basement just demoted me from Lay Librarian to Shelf Sharer, and that description in the article does fit me better. I've read them all and kept the ones that are meaningful to me. They make me happy. I re-read many of them as comfort reads; others are there to share with young visitors.
I am not counting my cookbooks.
My collection is not growing anymore, though. I mostly borrow from the library now, and any hard copies I purchase I usually buy 'used' and pass on to someone else, even if I love them.
I have tried really hard to adapt to ebooks but they make me sad.
posted by evilmomlady at 3:10 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
I am not counting my cookbooks.
My collection is not growing anymore, though. I mostly borrow from the library now, and any hard copies I purchase I usually buy 'used' and pass on to someone else, even if I love them.
I have tried really hard to adapt to ebooks but they make me sad.
posted by evilmomlady at 3:10 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
Without even counting I know I’m well over 500. I don’t really reread them, and honestly have quite a few I’ve never read, but I’ve recently decided I’m totally okay with my bookcases being mostly decoration. They still represent me, it’s just that I ready dozens of books from the library each year instead of buying them.
posted by obfuscation at 3:12 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
posted by obfuscation at 3:12 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
Ask legendary clean-queen Marie Kondo and she'd likely disagree....
Well Actually, people have asked her, and she has confirmed that Marie Kondo doesn't hate your books.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:14 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
Well Actually, people have asked her, and she has confirmed that Marie Kondo doesn't hate your books.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:14 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
has anyone gone to the trouble of calculating categories based on ratios of "books on hand you either haven't read or fully intend to read again" versus "books you'll actually read before you die"?
That would be the most relevant to me.
posted by philip-random at 3:15 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
That would be the most relevant to me.
posted by philip-random at 3:15 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I just came home and measured.
About 55 feet of shelves, with around 15 books per foot, roughly equals 825 books. I might be overestimating by as much as a hundred? Also this is just my books, I'm not counting the couple hundred the spouse owns. If I added in everything from before the hurricane I'd probably multiply this by about 2.5 or more, though I probably would have had a purge of a few hundred. Very few of these books are ones I have not read. Maybe a hundred at most. If that.
I don't even think of my library as being large. I could easily add a few more shelf units in this place without it feeling cramped. And yet this ranking ladder tops out at a mere 500 books? It's on a publisher's site, too. Nobody owns books any more I guess.
posted by egypturnash at 3:15 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
About 55 feet of shelves, with around 15 books per foot, roughly equals 825 books. I might be overestimating by as much as a hundred? Also this is just my books, I'm not counting the couple hundred the spouse owns. If I added in everything from before the hurricane I'd probably multiply this by about 2.5 or more, though I probably would have had a purge of a few hundred. Very few of these books are ones I have not read. Maybe a hundred at most. If that.
I don't even think of my library as being large. I could easily add a few more shelf units in this place without it feeling cramped. And yet this ranking ladder tops out at a mere 500 books? It's on a publisher's site, too. Nobody owns books any more I guess.
posted by egypturnash at 3:15 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
I will never forget the year a beloved member of the community passed away, a professor emeritus and someone who left their mark on community gardening discussions, sustainability initiatives, they described Tokyo immediately after Japan's surrender and driving around in a US Army jeep trying to identify coordinates in the blasted, fire-bombed city, in order to install comm equipment.. they stood in front of bulldozers in occupied Palestine some 20+ years ago.. just a remarkable person
Their grandson arrived just as the sidewalk sale fundraiser for the public library was wrapping up, we were bringing in all the crap and putting stuff in boxes, and here's this young guy with a pick-up filled with books.. All this person's books, and I'd call them well-read in the sense of breadth and some depth, but mostly breadth. They wanted to know what was happening in China in the 1990s so they looked into authors describing economic and social conditions, that kind of thing. Feasibility studies on nuclear energy to bridge demand in the early 21st century. Gardening resources, philosophy and religion texts, computing textbooks. Now here is a truck load of books and a desperate young man who would go on to use some of his inheritance to offer a gun detailing business and he's a hot minute from taking all this to the town waste depot. It was a day.
posted by ginger.beef at 3:15 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
Their grandson arrived just as the sidewalk sale fundraiser for the public library was wrapping up, we were bringing in all the crap and putting stuff in boxes, and here's this young guy with a pick-up filled with books.. All this person's books, and I'd call them well-read in the sense of breadth and some depth, but mostly breadth. They wanted to know what was happening in China in the 1990s so they looked into authors describing economic and social conditions, that kind of thing. Feasibility studies on nuclear energy to bridge demand in the early 21st century. Gardening resources, philosophy and religion texts, computing textbooks. Now here is a truck load of books and a desperate young man who would go on to use some of his inheritance to offer a gun detailing business and he's a hot minute from taking all this to the town waste depot. It was a day.
posted by ginger.beef at 3:15 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
How do you live with that few books? I really can't imagine it.
I'm surrounded by books and moldering paper of every kind all day long at work, most of which represents projects for me and coworkers in various states of long-term progress, some never really to be completed. I need a little space in my life where the paper is mostly just for pleasure and isn't looming over and around me constantly.
Also, spending all day long with old things is - for me anyway - a constant reminder that I've got a finite amount of time to read and that there's really not much point in piling this stuff up for other reasons.*
It also helps that I now live in a house that my university professor FIL died in and left PACKED with books and paper that his daughters spent ~1 year cleaning out, grumbling the entire time.
* … to preserve the living, and make the dead to live, to keep men out of their Urnes, and discourse of humane fragments in them, is not impertinent unto our profession; whose study is life and death, who daily behold examples of mortality, and of all men least need artificial memento’s, or coffins by our bed side, to minde us of our grave.- Thomas Browne
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:21 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I'm surrounded by books and moldering paper of every kind all day long at work, most of which represents projects for me and coworkers in various states of long-term progress, some never really to be completed. I need a little space in my life where the paper is mostly just for pleasure and isn't looming over and around me constantly.
Also, spending all day long with old things is - for me anyway - a constant reminder that I've got a finite amount of time to read and that there's really not much point in piling this stuff up for other reasons.*
It also helps that I now live in a house that my university professor FIL died in and left PACKED with books and paper that his daughters spent ~1 year cleaning out, grumbling the entire time.
* … to preserve the living, and make the dead to live, to keep men out of their Urnes, and discourse of humane fragments in them, is not impertinent unto our profession; whose study is life and death, who daily behold examples of mortality, and of all men least need artificial memento’s, or coffins by our bed side, to minde us of our grave.- Thomas Browne
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:21 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
Please, anyone who is approaching old age while maintaining a huge library: Don't put the burden of trying to figure out what to do with all those books on your kids. Dispose of your collection responsibly yourself or write clear instructions in your will for how you want them disposed of.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:24 PM on March 11 [21 favorites]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:24 PM on March 11 [21 favorites]
As a child I was a part of a fairly impoverished family. We basically had food security, but very little else. However, I was raised near a famous university and there were many used bookstores in close proximity. Good books could be had for a dime! Due to this fact and my mothers love of reading we had over 7000 books in our house. (I know, bc on rainy days my friends and I would count them). We felt wealthy only in the way we were far ahead of anyone we knew in our book collection. Such treasures! One thing that turned out to be true was anyone who reads a lot, and broadly, can become reasonably well self educated. I am grateful for that. To this day it is very very hard for me to part with a book. I certainly am in the +1000 club though I no longer count them on rainy days.
posted by jcworth at 3:26 PM on March 11 [17 favorites]
posted by jcworth at 3:26 PM on March 11 [17 favorites]
we had over 7000 books in our house. (I know, bc on rainy days my friends and I would count them)
"let me tell you kids what we used to do before TikTok"
posted by ginger.beef at 3:28 PM on March 11 [8 favorites]
"let me tell you kids what we used to do before TikTok"
posted by ginger.beef at 3:28 PM on March 11 [8 favorites]
has anyone gone to the trouble of calculating categories based on ratios of "books on hand you either haven't read or fully intend to read again" versus "books you'll actually read before you die"?
[bookriot:] “I am no stranger to the meticulously organized TBR — I do, in fact, have a spreadsheet of my home library...”
posted by HearHere at 3:30 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
[bookriot:] “I am no stranger to the meticulously organized TBR — I do, in fact, have a spreadsheet of my home library...”
posted by HearHere at 3:30 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
This is where we all talk (modestly, of course) about how many books we have? Whee!
At last count, about 1200
posted by jokeefe at 3:31 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
At last count, about 1200
posted by jokeefe at 3:31 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
I had over 2000 books back in the day and they were packed up by someone else while I was absent from home for five years. Since I got back I've been bringing them inside from storage out in the garage. For the last 5 years I dig out a box every couple weeks and air them out. I've been putting any novels in good shape in the neighbourhood little free libraries.
About twice a month I drive to all the LFLs and fill them up. The nonfiction and reference books I'm passing on to people who are interested. I'm getting old and am don't want to leave a mess. Now I just download audiobooks and kept them on a hard drive.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:35 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
About twice a month I drive to all the LFLs and fill them up. The nonfiction and reference books I'm passing on to people who are interested. I'm getting old and am don't want to leave a mess. Now I just download audiobooks and kept them on a hard drive.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:35 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
And that's after my wife, a librarian, made me get rid of things like five duplicate copies of Wide Sargasso Sea. But then a good friend went into care, and I was invited to take what I wanted from her library, which was extensive--she was one of the first people to do a PhD in Canadian Literature in the country-- and I came home with bags and boxes and more bags and then I went there again and filled up more boxes and etc. We haven't integrated those yet, so the number hasn't been updated. But I couldn't bear to see her intellectual life disposed of, and her children were just as happy to let me grab what I wanted, barring the stuff that was genuinely valuable, which was sold.
The point: not much of one, just that I love books
posted by jokeefe at 3:37 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
The point: not much of one, just that I love books
posted by jokeefe at 3:37 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
I have no earthly idea how many actual books we have but every single room in my house has bookshelves, except for the bathrooms. I'd estimate that I'm a tsundoku master minus the not reading them part. Yes, I have, at the very least, paged through all of them and read most of them all the way through. I'm including cookbooks because I do read them at least once. I love books. Books are my happy place.
We do have a very detailed plan for the disposal of our books after we're gone, and all the kids will have to do is pull some very carefully tied threads to get them all off to where they need to be.
posted by cooker girl at 3:43 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
We do have a very detailed plan for the disposal of our books after we're gone, and all the kids will have to do is pull some very carefully tied threads to get them all off to where they need to be.
posted by cooker girl at 3:43 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
LibraryThing says 3763 total, 322 marked gone, 350 unread. But it doesn't know that I just moved and donated about 1200 of them (drawn from both read and unread). OTOH, I have a whole case full of art books that I've never gotten around to entering. So, say, between 2500 and 3000 as of this writing.
I guess that's kind of a lot, but I certainly know plenty of people who have more books than I do... but I'm the only person I know who's written software to choose a book at random to read next that is either unread or read more than ten years ago.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 3:44 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
I guess that's kind of a lot, but I certainly know plenty of people who have more books than I do... but I'm the only person I know who's written software to choose a book at random to read next that is either unread or read more than ten years ago.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 3:44 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?”
“Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?” —Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library
Fifteen years ago I would buy 3-5 new books a week, and had three or four on the go at once. Then I bought my first smartphone.
Now the size of my library is much diminished, after many moves and various purges. We're getting to the right amount for the space we have now, and I'm still a bit sad for it. I dreamed of living in a library and while I have more books than most people I know, it's far from my childhood fantasy.
I still buy a physical book here and there, mostly odd things or art tomes, but the tide has turned and most all of my active book reading is on the phone. Which in turn, I feel, doesn't set a good example for my kids. Quelle dommage!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:53 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
“Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?” —Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library
Fifteen years ago I would buy 3-5 new books a week, and had three or four on the go at once. Then I bought my first smartphone.
Now the size of my library is much diminished, after many moves and various purges. We're getting to the right amount for the space we have now, and I'm still a bit sad for it. I dreamed of living in a library and while I have more books than most people I know, it's far from my childhood fantasy.
I still buy a physical book here and there, mostly odd things or art tomes, but the tide has turned and most all of my active book reading is on the phone. Which in turn, I feel, doesn't set a good example for my kids. Quelle dommage!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:53 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I do have a lot of books.
OK, not as much as some of you.
I probably have more games than you (I have thousands)
I recently found my Gibson's and am rereading them, And I don't know where my Lovecraft books have gone to, but despite the problematicy, would read those again if I find them.
Would like to reread Illuminatus again.
Maybe Fear and Loathing in LV. have reread on the campaign trail a few times.
But most of my books are things I grew up with, or textbooks I got in college. Or whatever Time-Life books I grew up with that my dog hasn't destroyed. The Sea! Animal Behavior!
posted by Windopaene at 3:58 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
OK, not as much as some of you.
I probably have more games than you (I have thousands)
I recently found my Gibson's and am rereading them, And I don't know where my Lovecraft books have gone to, but despite the problematicy, would read those again if I find them.
Would like to reread Illuminatus again.
Maybe Fear and Loathing in LV. have reread on the campaign trail a few times.
But most of my books are things I grew up with, or textbooks I got in college. Or whatever Time-Life books I grew up with that my dog hasn't destroyed. The Sea! Animal Behavior!
posted by Windopaene at 3:58 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
Funny that this post came today, since tomorrow a bookdealer will be at my house to help me re-home a couple of hundred books. Last year, I had a couple of health scares and realized that I don't want to leave too much of a mess to my kids, so I'm generally getting rid of stuff. Out go the books I will never read, and the books I'll never read again.
But 500 -- that's just the cookbooks. I'm never going to go that low.
posted by mumimor at 4:03 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
But 500 -- that's just the cookbooks. I'm never going to go that low.
posted by mumimor at 4:03 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
I work in books and have my whole life, but I'm nearing the end of my career and while the last move did help trim the library, I haven't taken deaccessioning seriously until recently. Sure, they bring me joy, but the sheer mass is a burden. But I assumed neither of my two kids was interested in inheriting the library, and a week or so ago one of them said they wanted it, so I'm slowing down, but I am still clearing out things that the internet replaced, like travel or programming guides and some cookbooks. Even so, I've slowed the acquisitions so I'm less worried about the structural integrity of the foundation of our house than I was five years ago.
posted by Stanczyk at 4:05 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
posted by Stanczyk at 4:05 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I counted 471 on the wall in the next room, then came in here where most of them are and thought about counting, but no.
I think this stuff is a trap. It certainly has been for me. Every big move, I've had to shed hundreds or thousands of books, then wherever I live next, I slowly (or quickly) accumulate more, and for what? Last year was a really good reading year for me, and I finished 38 books. Thirty-eight. That's around three-quarters of a book a week. For the past few years before that, I managed more in the mid-20s per year. This is wasteful and unsustainable, and what's worse, I used to take an enormous and worthless pride in them all, as though I had something to do with them. If a thread like this had happened ten years ago, twenty, you better believe I would tell you exactly how many I had. And so what? No matter how many books I have, if it's more than I can read, it's a waste. Every couple of months I go through them, box up fifty or a hundred, and send them to the thrift store or second-hand store. It's hard because there's still part of me that wants them here, that is used to seeing them every day, that thinks, foolishly, that one of these days I will read them. I haven't read a physical book in years. The ebooks take up less room but they're just as wasteful.
These things aren't part of me. There was a time when I would look at them and think about where I'd gotten them, and it'd bring back memories, but now even that is tainted. "Oh, I remember, I was sitting here at my desk browsing Amazon yet again in exactly the same way I've done a thousand times before!" "Ah yes, the big chain used bookstore that's the only one left in a town that used to have so many used places, how well I remember walking down its anonymous aisles..." I don't even get the joy of that bodily memory anymore. Another click, another cardboard box with a book in it. Not even that anymore, another click, and a file gets downloaded, and it's the same screen with the same sized text as everything else I've read recently.
But it's okay. I'm going to get rid of these slowly and un-methodically, and then if I die anytime soon, everyone is allowed to just throw them in a dumpster, I won't care and neither should anyone else. No one's reading them now, so no one will be harmed if they can never be read again. And I will remind my kids, you can't be proud of stuff you bought, that's not any kind of accomplishment. Be proud of what you've read, what you've thought through, what you remember and what you do, not of being the owner of thousands of pounds of paper.
posted by mittens at 4:06 PM on March 11 [11 favorites]
I think this stuff is a trap. It certainly has been for me. Every big move, I've had to shed hundreds or thousands of books, then wherever I live next, I slowly (or quickly) accumulate more, and for what? Last year was a really good reading year for me, and I finished 38 books. Thirty-eight. That's around three-quarters of a book a week. For the past few years before that, I managed more in the mid-20s per year. This is wasteful and unsustainable, and what's worse, I used to take an enormous and worthless pride in them all, as though I had something to do with them. If a thread like this had happened ten years ago, twenty, you better believe I would tell you exactly how many I had. And so what? No matter how many books I have, if it's more than I can read, it's a waste. Every couple of months I go through them, box up fifty or a hundred, and send them to the thrift store or second-hand store. It's hard because there's still part of me that wants them here, that is used to seeing them every day, that thinks, foolishly, that one of these days I will read them. I haven't read a physical book in years. The ebooks take up less room but they're just as wasteful.
These things aren't part of me. There was a time when I would look at them and think about where I'd gotten them, and it'd bring back memories, but now even that is tainted. "Oh, I remember, I was sitting here at my desk browsing Amazon yet again in exactly the same way I've done a thousand times before!" "Ah yes, the big chain used bookstore that's the only one left in a town that used to have so many used places, how well I remember walking down its anonymous aisles..." I don't even get the joy of that bodily memory anymore. Another click, another cardboard box with a book in it. Not even that anymore, another click, and a file gets downloaded, and it's the same screen with the same sized text as everything else I've read recently.
But it's okay. I'm going to get rid of these slowly and un-methodically, and then if I die anytime soon, everyone is allowed to just throw them in a dumpster, I won't care and neither should anyone else. No one's reading them now, so no one will be harmed if they can never be read again. And I will remind my kids, you can't be proud of stuff you bought, that's not any kind of accomplishment. Be proud of what you've read, what you've thought through, what you remember and what you do, not of being the owner of thousands of pounds of paper.
posted by mittens at 4:06 PM on March 11 [11 favorites]
My floor book piles are approaching Collyer Brother levels, but if that's how I leave this earth, I'm fine with that.
posted by Capt. Renault at 4:06 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 4:06 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
Through my teens and 20s I read truckloads of sci-fi/fantasy books; the ones I hadn't borrowed/returned fell by the wayside years ago, which is fine because I'd have never re-read 99% of them anyway - not that they were bad, but by and large they didn't reach "beloved/repeatedly readable" status for me (that's also true of most movies I nevertheless enjoyed watching once). I understand how some folks like to collect books, but that's not me. And as I get older, I've started to think about all the accumulated clutter and detritus I'd rather not leave behind for my son to have to deal with, which is even more impetus not to keep books simply for the sake of having them.
I hang onto maybe a couple dozen well-used nonfiction reference books and cookbooks, plus another dozen or so favorites (primarily humor/comic books) I like to re-read now and then. Anything else I prefer to borrow from the library so I don't have to deal with it forever. On top of that, nowadays a lot of reference material is available online or as e-books, so there's additional physical books I don't have to lug around and find room for. In fact, now that I think of it I could jettison all the cookbooks I haven't touched since I started looking up recipes online...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:07 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I hang onto maybe a couple dozen well-used nonfiction reference books and cookbooks, plus another dozen or so favorites (primarily humor/comic books) I like to re-read now and then. Anything else I prefer to borrow from the library so I don't have to deal with it forever. On top of that, nowadays a lot of reference material is available online or as e-books, so there's additional physical books I don't have to lug around and find room for. In fact, now that I think of it I could jettison all the cookbooks I haven't touched since I started looking up recipes online...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:07 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
This struck me as funny:
They are, as the Lebanese-American author/thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, “a powerful reminder of your limitations – the vast quantity of things you don’t know, half-know, or will one day realise you’re wrong about.”
It's funny because Taleb has never thought or admitted he was wrong about absolutely anything, as RationalWiki says, "Taleb is pretty smart, though not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, because it's impossible for anyone to be as smart as Taleb thinks he is."
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:14 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
They are, as the Lebanese-American author/thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, “a powerful reminder of your limitations – the vast quantity of things you don’t know, half-know, or will one day realise you’re wrong about.”
It's funny because Taleb has never thought or admitted he was wrong about absolutely anything, as RationalWiki says, "Taleb is pretty smart, though not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, because it's impossible for anyone to be as smart as Taleb thinks he is."
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:14 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
The vast majority of my books have been in storage for a year and I'm bringing them home and unpacking them bit by bit. I don't really have room for them but a home without books - less than 500 is without books, thanks - just seems so lonely, so unfinished, so empty. I'm trying to triage them now but it's difficult, because you never know, the day that I need to reread everything Georgette Heyer ever wrote may come. It may! Also without books the dust doesn't have anything to settle on and just goes everywhere.
I guess I have around 800 books in storage and about 100 unpacked now? I got rid of so many when I moved cross country but it was still 50 boxes, probably 20 or more books per box. I haven't added too many in the six years since then, because most of my reading is electronic now. I am thinking it's time to get physical copies of some of those ebooks, though. I've never even owned a physical copy of a T.Kingfisher book but I have read all of them, reread most, and now I want the books to have forever. My kids live with me and my son has his own library of small press anarchy and zines; my granddaughter has children's books everywhere and even my daughter has some books floating around. So they can't complain about disposing of my library some day. Or, well, they could try. . .
posted by mygothlaundry at 4:15 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
I guess I have around 800 books in storage and about 100 unpacked now? I got rid of so many when I moved cross country but it was still 50 boxes, probably 20 or more books per box. I haven't added too many in the six years since then, because most of my reading is electronic now. I am thinking it's time to get physical copies of some of those ebooks, though. I've never even owned a physical copy of a T.Kingfisher book but I have read all of them, reread most, and now I want the books to have forever. My kids live with me and my son has his own library of small press anarchy and zines; my granddaughter has children's books everywhere and even my daughter has some books floating around. So they can't complain about disposing of my library some day. Or, well, they could try. . .
posted by mygothlaundry at 4:15 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
To put that more succinctly, I regret the books I do not own more than the ones I do.
posted by mygothlaundry at 4:17 PM on March 11 [17 favorites]
posted by mygothlaundry at 4:17 PM on March 11 [17 favorites]
Dispose of your collection responsibly yourself or write clear instructions in your will for how you want them disposed of.
Dispose how? No one wants books anymore. I suspect most people’s books are going to end up in the shredder.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:29 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
Dispose how? No one wants books anymore. I suspect most people’s books are going to end up in the shredder.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:29 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
I think it's easier to count the number of bookcases or shelves, and estimate the number of books per shelf as about 30. So around 5,000 plus boxes on the floor. Time to trim!
posted by mdoar at 4:34 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
posted by mdoar at 4:34 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I read a lot of fiction, so I switched to ebooks maybe 10 years ago. I really don't need to save all those paperbacks. I can read long, chunky books on my phone without any of the "eye strain" problems that the Kindle marketing folks hype. I buy books from Apple now as I am avoiding Amazon as much as possible.
So the answer is I don't have many physical books at all anymore. Started getting rid of them when we were moving a lot. My wife still has a ton of books though.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:41 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
So the answer is I don't have many physical books at all anymore. Started getting rid of them when we were moving a lot. My wife still has a ton of books though.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:41 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
500 is a bafflingly small number to me. How do you live with that few books? I really can't imagine it.
Single bedroom apartment with two people, a cat, and a home office.
I grew up getting almost all of my books from the public library; I was only allowed one bookcase worth to myself at home (despite having an entire book wall, hand built by my father, full of books that my parents never touched) before my mother would declare my room too messy and start throwing them out.
I lost almost all of them when I was kicked out for being queer, and then I was homeless or couch surfing between college semesters, so books have always been a temporary presence in my life. So I never really developed the book-buying habit. I still only have one bookcase, though there’s probably two more’s worth scattered around the house. Don’t have the money or space to expand and the public library is my faithful friend, so I suppose I’m nominally in the read-and-chuck group despite almost never getting rid of the books I do own.
posted by brook horse at 4:47 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
Single bedroom apartment with two people, a cat, and a home office.
I grew up getting almost all of my books from the public library; I was only allowed one bookcase worth to myself at home (despite having an entire book wall, hand built by my father, full of books that my parents never touched) before my mother would declare my room too messy and start throwing them out.
I lost almost all of them when I was kicked out for being queer, and then I was homeless or couch surfing between college semesters, so books have always been a temporary presence in my life. So I never really developed the book-buying habit. I still only have one bookcase, though there’s probably two more’s worth scattered around the house. Don’t have the money or space to expand and the public library is my faithful friend, so I suppose I’m nominally in the read-and-chuck group despite almost never getting rid of the books I do own.
posted by brook horse at 4:47 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
I guess I have between 500-800 books. I wish I had less, maybe 100-200. The vast majority of my books are no longer in print, or have doubled in price since I bought them, and If I ever wanted to get them again, second hand, it would cost me a small fortune (and yet, if I sold them I would only get pennies, go figure). I wish there were good libraries around here, but I live in a country that doesn't really have the infrastructure that the US/Europe has. Sigh.
posted by Omon Ra at 4:54 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
posted by Omon Ra at 4:54 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
"books on hand you either haven't read or fully intend to read again" versus "books you'll actually read before you die"?
One of my prized possessions is a still-in-shrink-wrap two-volume edition of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, a book I very much plan to read someday, but for some reason the people around me are constantly trying to get rid of!
My plan is to read it before I die, which means that I can't die until I've read it, so what's the rush?
posted by chavenet at 5:01 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
One of my prized possessions is a still-in-shrink-wrap two-volume edition of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, a book I very much plan to read someday, but for some reason the people around me are constantly trying to get rid of!
My plan is to read it before I die, which means that I can't die until I've read it, so what's the rush?
posted by chavenet at 5:01 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
When I culled a few hundred of my 1000 or so books, my new boyfriend (at the time, now my husband!) took them to the used book store for me, because it was a bit of a walk and he was showing off. Anyways, the buyer said, "If this is what she is getting rid of, I cannot imagine how good the collection she is keeping is," and this I would like on my tombstone.
Also it was so funny to walk by the store for weeks and see my old books in the window or come across them on a shelf. "I have this!" I would think, and then I would remember.
posted by dame at 5:10 PM on March 11 [11 favorites]
Also it was so funny to walk by the store for weeks and see my old books in the window or come across them on a shelf. "I have this!" I would think, and then I would remember.
posted by dame at 5:10 PM on March 11 [11 favorites]
Also it was always funny to bring guys home when I was single and have them be like "Wow, you have a lot of books." It was a good filter. (No, I have not read them all, but I have read a lot of them!)
posted by dame at 5:11 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
posted by dame at 5:11 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I have roughly 450 books on my shelves (after a major cull due to a move) and just over 700 ebooks. Ebooks are my go-to nowadays, while physical books are acquired if they're special to me and that I will be read and reread in the future.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 5:18 PM on March 11
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 5:18 PM on March 11
If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck them! --John Waters
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:21 PM on March 11 [14 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:21 PM on March 11 [14 favorites]
Obviously, this is just a listicle and therefore Not for Serious Consideration, but I do find it a bit funny that a book publisher of all organizations would imply it's not possible to have read 500+ books.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:24 PM on March 11 [10 favorites]
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:24 PM on March 11 [10 favorites]
Coming back, my own book collection is much smaller than the number of books I've read. I tried to pare it down to just those I especially wanted to remember or reread someday. Since I'm not in the journaling habit and I have a bad episodic memory, that means that a lot of books have just totally disappeared from my mind. They might still be there somewhere, but the road has been forgotten, so to speak.
My ideal personal library would be a mixture of physical books and then maybe some book-shaped digital object that I could pick up and flip through a record of the books I'd read but not kept. With their covers, because the visual information is important to me too. Maybe one such object for fantasy, another for non-fiction, and so on.
I wonder if I could convince a venture capitalist that I am a large marketing niche.
They'd want to connect it to some social media app or to amazon tho. bleh.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:29 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
My ideal personal library would be a mixture of physical books and then maybe some book-shaped digital object that I could pick up and flip through a record of the books I'd read but not kept. With their covers, because the visual information is important to me too. Maybe one such object for fantasy, another for non-fiction, and so on.
I wonder if I could convince a venture capitalist that I am a large marketing niche.
They'd want to connect it to some social media app or to amazon tho. bleh.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:29 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I have 9000+, so not on the scale here. (That's with deaccessioning every year, mostly from the contemporary fiction shelves.) I'm an academic who doesn't live near a research library, so this is more of a working collection. What's going to happen with it after I die is an interesting question (looks around for people longing for a collection of Victorian religious fiction); at some point, I'll have to have a chat with our librarians. My father made arrangements for his books to go to his university library.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:48 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
posted by thomas j wise at 5:48 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
I’m kind of relieved to see that other people do a lot of ebook reading on their phone. I have a perfectly good e-reader that I literally never use.
posted by PussKillian at 5:50 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
posted by PussKillian at 5:50 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
No idea. I go on tangents and read… all the books about the thing. My TBR section alone is larger than 50. I think I will close this tab and go read a book. :-)
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:57 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:57 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I have a library. By that I mean that I am privileged to have a room in my home that is entirely dedicated to the storage of books. My household owns enough books that this is practical for us. There are three of us and I have no idea how many books we own between us all. There are five standard book cases, e.g. taller than six feet, and a several shorter shelving units in the library. I also personally keep about 300 books in my bedroom, mainly slim paperbacks from my youth, or books on subjects I am currently studying. I currently have a tsundoku of about twenty books, and I have to admit they are the books that I am finding it difficult to get into. There is an even chance that I will make an attempt, give up and then they will end up in my give-away pile. The one on WW2 London is traumatizing me and the one on early American history is offending me, because it is strongly pushing American exceptionalism. The book on Baroque music is so detailed I have to keep looking things up, so I am making slow going. I have the same issue with a text book called "The Physiology of Behavior." I should probably read some book on biochemistry before I start it again.
I remember long ago doing a count and discovering that my five-year-old had six-hundred books of her own, at the time when she was about to start kindergarten. This is espite the fact that she was hard on books and had destroyed a fair number of them, thus reducing her collection. But picture books, especially the paper back ones don't take up a lot of shelf space, so they all fit in one shelving unit. Many of her books were chapter books, which I had read to her. Of course that was back in the day when we had * no * devices, just a land line. I used to go to the book fairs and pick them up by the box full.
A lot of the books in my collection are my darling old favourites which I have probably read three to to fifteen times already, and expect that I may read again. I have been culling these steadily over the last five years, as I realise I have outgrown some of them, and that others did not age well. If, when I reread, I decide I won't want to read them again, I pass them on to a Little Free Library or a book fair.
There are a LOT of out of print books that I keep because they are not available on line. That's probably the biggest part of my collection.
I don't understand how 500 books can be considered the top level in book ownership, nor why the label for that level is Tsundoku, which implies the books are a to-be-read pile, farther implying that the owner has not read the majority of their books yet. A great number of my books are reference books, such as art references, or how to identify trees books, or history books. I use them. It is sometimes faster to look stuff up on line, but increasingly I have found that search engines are not satisfying me and only lead to sites that provide surface information, dozens and dozens of them with all the same information, basically providing info on the level someone in Junior High might want if they were assigned to write a research paper on the topic. When I search I am frequently looking for much more information that I can just find on Wikipedia. That means I am going be wanting books or really good sites. It's HARD to find really good sites. I treasure the ones I have found, and use some of them multiple times a year.
I don't trust the internet to be there for me in three or five years - It probably will be there, but since search has been degrading steadily, I definitely expect that the internet will be less useful to me by then.
It would cost me a heck of a lot to replace my books, should I abandon them to move cross country. A great number of them are out of print, and while it makes sense to get more up to date reference books, that doesn't work well for specific authors, especially for fiction. Well known classics like Pride and Prejudice will likely always be easily and cheaply available, but what about Mrs. Gaskell, or Fanny Burney? If an author isn't a great name and their books are thirty years old or more, they can be impossible to find.
My local library system has been massively de-funded, and has reduced their collection of paper books by 2/3rds. They have replaced them with e-books. But they don't own those e-books, and Libby is an American for-profit corporation. I could easily see my library losing access to that system, either because the corporation decides to only provide access to a n extremely limited selection of books that bring them higher profits, or because they raise their fees so that my public library can't afford to pay them.
Also, I try not to read on screens - I don't like staring into a back lit screen. I like to read in bed and if I am reading a screen at bed time it screws up my circadian rhythm. I spend too much time on computers to want to read from a screen as well.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:01 PM on March 11 [10 favorites]
I remember long ago doing a count and discovering that my five-year-old had six-hundred books of her own, at the time when she was about to start kindergarten. This is espite the fact that she was hard on books and had destroyed a fair number of them, thus reducing her collection. But picture books, especially the paper back ones don't take up a lot of shelf space, so they all fit in one shelving unit. Many of her books were chapter books, which I had read to her. Of course that was back in the day when we had * no * devices, just a land line. I used to go to the book fairs and pick them up by the box full.
A lot of the books in my collection are my darling old favourites which I have probably read three to to fifteen times already, and expect that I may read again. I have been culling these steadily over the last five years, as I realise I have outgrown some of them, and that others did not age well. If, when I reread, I decide I won't want to read them again, I pass them on to a Little Free Library or a book fair.
There are a LOT of out of print books that I keep because they are not available on line. That's probably the biggest part of my collection.
I don't understand how 500 books can be considered the top level in book ownership, nor why the label for that level is Tsundoku, which implies the books are a to-be-read pile, farther implying that the owner has not read the majority of their books yet. A great number of my books are reference books, such as art references, or how to identify trees books, or history books. I use them. It is sometimes faster to look stuff up on line, but increasingly I have found that search engines are not satisfying me and only lead to sites that provide surface information, dozens and dozens of them with all the same information, basically providing info on the level someone in Junior High might want if they were assigned to write a research paper on the topic. When I search I am frequently looking for much more information that I can just find on Wikipedia. That means I am going be wanting books or really good sites. It's HARD to find really good sites. I treasure the ones I have found, and use some of them multiple times a year.
I don't trust the internet to be there for me in three or five years - It probably will be there, but since search has been degrading steadily, I definitely expect that the internet will be less useful to me by then.
It would cost me a heck of a lot to replace my books, should I abandon them to move cross country. A great number of them are out of print, and while it makes sense to get more up to date reference books, that doesn't work well for specific authors, especially for fiction. Well known classics like Pride and Prejudice will likely always be easily and cheaply available, but what about Mrs. Gaskell, or Fanny Burney? If an author isn't a great name and their books are thirty years old or more, they can be impossible to find.
My local library system has been massively de-funded, and has reduced their collection of paper books by 2/3rds. They have replaced them with e-books. But they don't own those e-books, and Libby is an American for-profit corporation. I could easily see my library losing access to that system, either because the corporation decides to only provide access to a n extremely limited selection of books that bring them higher profits, or because they raise their fees so that my public library can't afford to pay them.
Also, I try not to read on screens - I don't like staring into a back lit screen. I like to read in bed and if I am reading a screen at bed time it screws up my circadian rhythm. I spend too much time on computers to want to read from a screen as well.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:01 PM on March 11 [10 favorites]
I used to keep every book I ever bought as well as a fairly large number of books from my deceased parents (stuff like all the James Michener books, for example), and ended up with probably a small-room's worth of floor to ceiling shelves that were double or triple stacked. In our current house they ended up on the lower level and basically became an earthquake hazard. With some prompting from my wife I realized I was basically never looking at them and most of them I wasn't even (re-)reading anymore because my consumption has moved to about 98% ebook. I did still like them basically as a big game hunter might like his stuffed trophies, but I really didn't need most of them (and they were not particularly valuable).
Thus, a few years back I gave away nearly all of them, and left myself with a single bookshelf unit where I, basically, keep my most treasured trophies. Books I particularly liked, my college major textbooks, etc.
I can't say I miss them but I did once go to a friend's place and say "hey, that's the same Shakespeare anthology I have -- no wait, I gave you that one. Oh, and that one, too. And all these."
posted by tclark at 6:04 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
Thus, a few years back I gave away nearly all of them, and left myself with a single bookshelf unit where I, basically, keep my most treasured trophies. Books I particularly liked, my college major textbooks, etc.
I can't say I miss them but I did once go to a friend's place and say "hey, that's the same Shakespeare anthology I have -- no wait, I gave you that one. Oh, and that one, too. And all these."
posted by tclark at 6:04 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
Tale of the vanished books. Back in the 90s I had a room that had floor to ceiling bookshelves on the walls without windows. I rented the room as bedroom to a young woman at Uni who was thrilled to live with my books for a couple years. After she got her teaching degree she moved 1800 miles away, got married and had children. A few years ago she was in Austin with her 17 year old daughter who had heard tales all her life about the library room her mom had lived in. She was so disappointed that the books had been all packed up and were in storage. Fortunately, she had also been told tales of the hippie landlady and was thrilled to quiz me about hippie days in Austin and what her mother was like when she was young.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 6:15 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 6:15 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
What is it about first-worlders and books (owned and/or read) as quantifiable virtue?
posted by signal at 6:15 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
posted by signal at 6:15 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
I LIKE BUYING BOOKS AS IF IT WERE MY PROFESSION!
Which is good because it is literally my profession.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:31 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
Which is good because it is literally my profession.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:31 PM on March 11 [7 favorites]
Does anyone else have a large collection of NYRB Classics that are arranged like the colors in a rainbow?
(NYRB Classics spines for reference)
posted by perhapses at 6:43 PM on March 11
(NYRB Classics spines for reference)
posted by perhapses at 6:43 PM on March 11
I had about 1500 books in my house, mostly SF from the sixties through nineties, much of it out of print, organized pretty well by subfield but not super curated. House burned down. Now? I've got like twelve actual books. I was never coming back from that.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:21 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:21 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
What a large book collection says to me is that you're good for toilet paper through the next pandemic.
I'd rather have a large bok collection so I can get cheap eggs.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:44 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I'd rather have a large bok collection so I can get cheap eggs.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:44 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I have probably read over 10,000 books. I had a collection of over 1,000 science fiction books by the time I was 15, which I kept in alphabetical order by author. There have been times in my life when entire walls and entire rooms were lined with books. I confess I once felt I felt my wide breadth of reading was a mark of distinction, and that my library somehow defined me. At one point, I also had a marvelous assemblage of the best subject-area books and professional literature, because I was a researcher and a teacher.
The smell of deteriorating paper was stifling, and I rarely re-read most of it. I began to weed my collection, slowly and steadily, at first making little headway. But in the last few years, I've been more ruthless.
Now? I guess I'm a Shelf Sharer. I rarely keep books after I've read them any more. Sometimes I summarize particularly good nonfiction, and certain novels I will buy on Kindle to re-read periodically. Otherwise, I have a short shelf of reference books (calligraphy, knitting, a bestiary, a dictionary of fantastic beings, a book about sentence diagraming, etc.), the complete Edward Gorey Amphigorey volumes, a close-to-complete collection of Walt Kelly's collected Pogo, and about eight books I haven't read yet, some of which I will take to the local Little Free Library without opening once the bloom is off. I read a lot of library books, too.
A couple of days ago, I even threw out most of my author's copies of my own books published in paperback in the 90s, because the paper had disintegrated so terribly. I did keep a couple of each, in case my adult kid wants them. People still buy them sometimes, but from Amazon, not from me.
posted by Peach at 7:53 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
The smell of deteriorating paper was stifling, and I rarely re-read most of it. I began to weed my collection, slowly and steadily, at first making little headway. But in the last few years, I've been more ruthless.
Now? I guess I'm a Shelf Sharer. I rarely keep books after I've read them any more. Sometimes I summarize particularly good nonfiction, and certain novels I will buy on Kindle to re-read periodically. Otherwise, I have a short shelf of reference books (calligraphy, knitting, a bestiary, a dictionary of fantastic beings, a book about sentence diagraming, etc.), the complete Edward Gorey Amphigorey volumes, a close-to-complete collection of Walt Kelly's collected Pogo, and about eight books I haven't read yet, some of which I will take to the local Little Free Library without opening once the bloom is off. I read a lot of library books, too.
A couple of days ago, I even threw out most of my author's copies of my own books published in paperback in the 90s, because the paper had disintegrated so terribly. I did keep a couple of each, in case my adult kid wants them. People still buy them sometimes, but from Amazon, not from me.
posted by Peach at 7:53 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I own 5 books and two of them were gifts that I only keep because I love the person who gave them to me. I read a lot but my time as a librarian confirmed my disinterest in being responsible for a bunch of heavy things.
I think if I ever decide to collect books, I'll only buy books that are interesting to look at. Holding a book close to your face to get a better look at a painting or drawing or something is pretty neat, I do miss that sometimes.
posted by birthday cake at 7:58 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I think if I ever decide to collect books, I'll only buy books that are interesting to look at. Holding a book close to your face to get a better look at a painting or drawing or something is pretty neat, I do miss that sometimes.
posted by birthday cake at 7:58 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
We're in that 1K+ range, like that 10% of customers who keep liquor stores in business. No unopened books, but many unfinished, especially many old textbooks or reference books. Since you mention it, we really should separate out the small fraction that might have potential interest or value to someone. Most of the rest will end up in landfill. If we had a fireplace maybe we'd burn them.
Or whatever Time-Life books I grew up with that my dog hasn't destroyed. The Sea! Animal Behavior!
Animal Behavior by Niko Tindbergen, with Bees on the cover. It's quite good. I actually flipped through it a few months ago. The Mind is my fave Time/Life Science series title. I have more than one copy of that one.
posted by ovvl at 8:02 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
Or whatever Time-Life books I grew up with that my dog hasn't destroyed. The Sea! Animal Behavior!
Animal Behavior by Niko Tindbergen, with Bees on the cover. It's quite good. I actually flipped through it a few months ago. The Mind is my fave Time/Life Science series title. I have more than one copy of that one.
posted by ovvl at 8:02 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
I've got 600 or so academic books on the shelves in my university office. At home, another 1400 or so on the shelves in the living room, with a 1-in-1-out rule, and occasionally swapping in hardcover or nicer editions when I spot them. 2/3 of it is literary/postmodern/contemporary fiction, about 100 books of contemporary poetry. A lot of American history, biography, criticism, essays. My mom's old hardcover copy of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, but also my own reading copy. That split is kind of the thing for me: the living room books are there to be read, by me and others, and they do get read and re-read—I'd say about 15% are ones I haven't read yet. But they're also on display, of course, and curated for sharing as a reflection of our values and interests and identities. I feel like home bookshelves in public-facing areas like living rooms serve as sort of social monuments for the space's residents—and here at our house, those monuments get a lot of traffic. When I was growing up, I think it was profoundly influential for me to regularly see my parents sitting in a reading chair next to a bookshelf, reading a book.
posted by vitia at 8:33 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
posted by vitia at 8:33 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
Oh, well, let's see....
...
...
...
I counted more than 600 paperbacks and hardcovers in one of the bookcases in my library room. That's enough of that.
Former librarian. Long-term book hoarder. If I have it, I've read it multiple times.
No, I am not using Dewey Decimal or LOC, but I do have my non-fiction by subject.
I look for authors who bring depth of knowledge and great enthusiasm along with their years of study. This cannot be duplicated through a quick Internet search.
Knowledge can be lost. I prefer to have it in a tangible form, literally at my fingertips.
I do borrow from my municipal library. The local branch is visible from my home library window.
I was sick this year, which kept me away from the annual library booksale. The pandemic forced the closing of numerous local used bookstores, including an excellent one for comics and books that I would visit at its original location in the next county.
I have no use for ebooks. I appreciate their value, but I refuse to let some third party retailer pull the plug on my purchases.
Books I have culled --
Cookbooks, other than a couple associated with family recipes.
Textbooks.
Subjects that I am no longer interested in.
Authors that I am no longer interested in.
Some of the children's books that I and my daughters do not want.
Many of the library booksale purchases. Rehoming is just fine.
Books that are forever purchases --
The much repaired Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedia Dictionary. This is the equivalent of Linus's blanket for me. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
The Alfred Hitchcock Presents collection of short stories in paperback format.
Various children's and young adult books that I remembered and tracked down as an adult. Be advised that out-of-print can have a hefty price tag.
Books related to hobbies that I no longer participate in, but may revisit in the future. I no longer scuba dive, but I do enjoy fish identification on Florida live webcam channels.
Libraries are the people's university. We can travel across time and distance to lands we have never seen, to meet people we have never met. Books awaken us.
Enjoy your books, whether they be written or spoken, paper or screens.
I'll be over here on a lawn chair, enjoying the sunshine, with a paperback novel.
Cheers.
posted by TrishaU at 8:33 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
...
...
...
I counted more than 600 paperbacks and hardcovers in one of the bookcases in my library room. That's enough of that.
Former librarian. Long-term book hoarder. If I have it, I've read it multiple times.
No, I am not using Dewey Decimal or LOC, but I do have my non-fiction by subject.
I look for authors who bring depth of knowledge and great enthusiasm along with their years of study. This cannot be duplicated through a quick Internet search.
Knowledge can be lost. I prefer to have it in a tangible form, literally at my fingertips.
I do borrow from my municipal library. The local branch is visible from my home library window.
I was sick this year, which kept me away from the annual library booksale. The pandemic forced the closing of numerous local used bookstores, including an excellent one for comics and books that I would visit at its original location in the next county.
I have no use for ebooks. I appreciate their value, but I refuse to let some third party retailer pull the plug on my purchases.
Books I have culled --
Cookbooks, other than a couple associated with family recipes.
Textbooks.
Subjects that I am no longer interested in.
Authors that I am no longer interested in.
Some of the children's books that I and my daughters do not want.
Many of the library booksale purchases. Rehoming is just fine.
Books that are forever purchases --
The much repaired Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedia Dictionary. This is the equivalent of Linus's blanket for me. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
The Alfred Hitchcock Presents collection of short stories in paperback format.
Various children's and young adult books that I remembered and tracked down as an adult. Be advised that out-of-print can have a hefty price tag.
Books related to hobbies that I no longer participate in, but may revisit in the future. I no longer scuba dive, but I do enjoy fish identification on Florida live webcam channels.
Libraries are the people's university. We can travel across time and distance to lands we have never seen, to meet people we have never met. Books awaken us.
Enjoy your books, whether they be written or spoken, paper or screens.
I'll be over here on a lawn chair, enjoying the sunshine, with a paperback novel.
Cheers.
posted by TrishaU at 8:33 PM on March 11 [6 favorites]
After my last cross-country move, when I sold or gave away or left behind many hundreds of books (and this was basically my third book collection) I re-examined why I had all of these books. I had read almost all of them, had a few dozen I revisited regularly, a few I kept meaning to read (I'm looking at you, Proust and Joyce) and a few I used for reference. I kept about fifty books. I let the others go with no regrets.
You see, I'm not saying this holds true for every book collector, or indeed for anyone but myself, but I wondered what purpose my collection held for me. I came to the conclusion that a lot of it came down to a kind of ego display; these books were like trophies displayed on my walls -- look at all of these books I've read -- you can tell I'm a reader of some discernment. This is who I am, and who I am is a person who has read a lot of books, some of them really difficult books. I found it rather liberating to let go of that. The books I sold paid for my gas and hotel rooms on the move.
I still haven't read beyond my first volume of Proust, and I continue to use my local library regularly. I've picked up a few more, but I'm keeping it under a hundred books now. I used to say it was my life's goal to read ten thousand books before I die but death seems a lot closer now and I am frighteningly close to that goal (largely thanks to some years when I would read five books or more a week) so I've stopped keeping track and I've stopped displaying my trophies on my walls.
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 9:53 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
You see, I'm not saying this holds true for every book collector, or indeed for anyone but myself, but I wondered what purpose my collection held for me. I came to the conclusion that a lot of it came down to a kind of ego display; these books were like trophies displayed on my walls -- look at all of these books I've read -- you can tell I'm a reader of some discernment. This is who I am, and who I am is a person who has read a lot of books, some of them really difficult books. I found it rather liberating to let go of that. The books I sold paid for my gas and hotel rooms on the move.
I still haven't read beyond my first volume of Proust, and I continue to use my local library regularly. I've picked up a few more, but I'm keeping it under a hundred books now. I used to say it was my life's goal to read ten thousand books before I die but death seems a lot closer now and I am frighteningly close to that goal (largely thanks to some years when I would read five books or more a week) so I've stopped keeping track and I've stopped displaying my trophies on my walls.
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 9:53 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]
I live in a very small apartment where space is at a premium, and I simply don't have the room to own as many books as I'd like. However, well over a decade ago I embraced the e-reader--e-ink only, mind you--and haven't looked back since. I occasionally buy a paper book but mostly I download epubs and mobi files. Calibre is great library software and connects to my Kobos and Kindles with little problem. (I also can't resist getting those epubs and mobi files from certain places on the web that view the whole "ownership" concept as liberally as possible. I justify this by pointing out how poor I am; a lame excuse but there it is. If you're an author and I've read your book gratis, I'm sorry! It's just so easy that way...)
posted by zardoz at 10:28 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 10:28 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I'm somewhere around 150, mostly ebooks, with a few physical cookbooks and a small collection of largely sentimental dead tree books. I grew up at a perfect time to embrace e-books and I'm extremely grateful for that, especially reading some of the comments here! My parents got me a Kindle Keyboard in my first year of college, about 15 years ago, and I still use it to this day. No distractions, no ads, just reading! It also hurts less than a hardcover when I drop it on my face in bed.
I solved the "you don't own this" problem to my satisfaction by only buying books that are DRM-free or ones that I can strip the DRM from and keep locally in Calibre. In an ideal world I would genuinely own those copies but this will have to do! As much as I'd like a big bookshelf and think they look neat, e-books are such a good solution for me that I'd rather furnish my space with other things. I do wish there were a better way to just have them "on display" for the kids so they can see what I read and maybe thumb through it themselves without having to ask me about it.
posted by Brassica oleracea at 11:38 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
I solved the "you don't own this" problem to my satisfaction by only buying books that are DRM-free or ones that I can strip the DRM from and keep locally in Calibre. In an ideal world I would genuinely own those copies but this will have to do! As much as I'd like a big bookshelf and think they look neat, e-books are such a good solution for me that I'd rather furnish my space with other things. I do wish there were a better way to just have them "on display" for the kids so they can see what I read and maybe thumb through it themselves without having to ask me about it.
posted by Brassica oleracea at 11:38 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]
Marina Hyde and Richard Osman knock chunks of disbelief off each other over how to shelve books [2½ min tiktok] - longer 11min YT rant/context.
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:49 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:49 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
I can’t count that high, even though one of the shelves has a lot of books about counting, because I went to grad school for that.
I can count the bookcases, though:
- Fourteen IKEA Billys.
- Three slightly-smaller-than-that bookcases that my father in law made to fit a wall two and a half Billys wide. Thanks!
- the cookbook shelf in the dining room, which is overfull, and our carpenter friend was going to make us a combination bookshelf/wine rack for there to pay back a debt but he never did
- the pile of kids’ books that never disappears because those books won’t fit in the bookcases in their room. They totally could if we got rid of the stinkers. There are a lot of stinkers.
posted by madcaptenor at 3:56 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
I can count the bookcases, though:
- Fourteen IKEA Billys.
- Three slightly-smaller-than-that bookcases that my father in law made to fit a wall two and a half Billys wide. Thanks!
- the cookbook shelf in the dining room, which is overfull, and our carpenter friend was going to make us a combination bookshelf/wine rack for there to pay back a debt but he never did
- the pile of kids’ books that never disappears because those books won’t fit in the bookcases in their room. They totally could if we got rid of the stinkers. There are a lot of stinkers.
posted by madcaptenor at 3:56 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
I grew up in a bookstore and my husband is a multidisciplinary artist, so our book collection is... not small. When we moved last summer, we did a ruthless cull and still, at the end of moving day, as I was lavishly tipping our (five! very burly!) movers, the foreman laughed and shook his head mournfully and said, "Many books. Many, many books." So that's where we're at.
posted by merriment at 4:15 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
posted by merriment at 4:15 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
I have no idea how many books I have, and I haven’t even considered the ebooks. All I know is that many of the shelves have them stacked two deep. We bought our son a fairly large bookshelf for his room, and HIS shelves are stacked two deep.
It’s not a lot of Fine Literature. There’s a lot of old battered paperback novels I’ve had since forever, a bunch of westerns and science fiction and fantasy, a lot of young adult in the kid’s room, some animal behavior books left over from grad school that I’ll probably never read again. There’s a smattering of more highbrow stuff, some of which is on more prominent display. I like collecting nice editions of classic novels when I find a bookstore while traveling. But mostly it’s an eclectic mix of whatever I bought, found, or was gifted over the years.
The only real rule I have is that if it’s on the shelf, SOMEONE in the house has to have read it. There’s no point to owning a book you’ve never read and never PLAN to read, is there?
posted by caution live frogs at 6:14 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
It’s not a lot of Fine Literature. There’s a lot of old battered paperback novels I’ve had since forever, a bunch of westerns and science fiction and fantasy, a lot of young adult in the kid’s room, some animal behavior books left over from grad school that I’ll probably never read again. There’s a smattering of more highbrow stuff, some of which is on more prominent display. I like collecting nice editions of classic novels when I find a bookstore while traveling. But mostly it’s an eclectic mix of whatever I bought, found, or was gifted over the years.
The only real rule I have is that if it’s on the shelf, SOMEONE in the house has to have read it. There’s no point to owning a book you’ve never read and never PLAN to read, is there?
posted by caution live frogs at 6:14 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
What is it about first-worlders and books (owned and/or read) as quantifiable virtue?
signal, We're surrounded by people who despise learning and are suspicious of books and also despise many of us and are suspicious of our lifestyles, so I suspect some of it is a reaction to the people who would like us to disappear or die. Additionally, not everybody can afford to purchase all of the books they read of course but a second-hand book is generally cheaper than a coffee so having a large library is not out of reach even if you're very poor, which makes book ownership a way of signaling a certain amount of learning and/or curiosity in a way that somewhat defies class.
posted by joannemerriam at 6:30 AM on March 12 [11 favorites]
signal, We're surrounded by people who despise learning and are suspicious of books and also despise many of us and are suspicious of our lifestyles, so I suspect some of it is a reaction to the people who would like us to disappear or die. Additionally, not everybody can afford to purchase all of the books they read of course but a second-hand book is generally cheaper than a coffee so having a large library is not out of reach even if you're very poor, which makes book ownership a way of signaling a certain amount of learning and/or curiosity in a way that somewhat defies class.
posted by joannemerriam at 6:30 AM on March 12 [11 favorites]
When I immigrated to the United States, I was only allowed to bring two suitcases with me, so my book collection was ruthlessly culled and the remaining books that I couldn't bear to part with were stored in my parents' attic and brought down to me one or two boxes at a time over a period of years, after I became a permanent resident.
When I moved back to Canada last year, I did a similar cull because we had to fit all of our stuff into a small truck, as that was what we could afford. I have perhaps 20 boxes of books remaining (those small packing boxes that hardware stores sell) which I would guess hold about 50 paperbacks or so, fewer hardbacks, so I might own 500-1000 books now, almost all of which are still in storage. Kindle tells me I also have 674 ebooks.
To me this seems like hardly any books at all.
posted by joannemerriam at 6:38 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
When I moved back to Canada last year, I did a similar cull because we had to fit all of our stuff into a small truck, as that was what we could afford. I have perhaps 20 boxes of books remaining (those small packing boxes that hardware stores sell) which I would guess hold about 50 paperbacks or so, fewer hardbacks, so I might own 500-1000 books now, almost all of which are still in storage. Kindle tells me I also have 674 ebooks.
To me this seems like hardly any books at all.
posted by joannemerriam at 6:38 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
The year before my divorce we used a barcode scanner to log all of our books and had around 1000. That was culled to about 50 I managed to hang onto and that made their way back to me over the years as a seed for my new solo collection.
For the first time in years all of my books are unpacked and on the shelf. Including books for my kids, I’ve read 95% of them (the only unread ones I have are the ones I get for $1 at the library and pass on to little free libraries when I’m done).Not included textbooks I picked up for homeschool reference (because those are rotating out as we speak) I have about 250 actual books…
…and about 2500 ebooks. My TBR pile is higher in ebook form because I had a habit of collecting mildly interesting books that were free or cheap but I think I only have 2-400 unread ebooks. I read roughly 150-200 books a year, I reread FLAGRANTLY, something that always seems to irritate people, and I have three library cards I use for ebooks and audiobooks through Libby. I grudgingly switched to ebooks as a nursing mom who was forced to sit still for multiple hours a day and who realized it’s hard to keep paperbacks intact when grabby baby hands are around. I maintained the habit when my digital collection surpassed any physical collection I’d managed to hold on to.
posted by annathea at 7:34 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
For the first time in years all of my books are unpacked and on the shelf. Including books for my kids, I’ve read 95% of them (the only unread ones I have are the ones I get for $1 at the library and pass on to little free libraries when I’m done).Not included textbooks I picked up for homeschool reference (because those are rotating out as we speak) I have about 250 actual books…
…and about 2500 ebooks. My TBR pile is higher in ebook form because I had a habit of collecting mildly interesting books that were free or cheap but I think I only have 2-400 unread ebooks. I read roughly 150-200 books a year, I reread FLAGRANTLY, something that always seems to irritate people, and I have three library cards I use for ebooks and audiobooks through Libby. I grudgingly switched to ebooks as a nursing mom who was forced to sit still for multiple hours a day and who realized it’s hard to keep paperbacks intact when grabby baby hands are around. I maintained the habit when my digital collection surpassed any physical collection I’d managed to hold on to.
posted by annathea at 7:34 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
What is it about first-worlders and books (owned and/or read) as quantifiable virtue?
I am not sure if you meant this question to sound accusatory or judgmental, but if you followed the question with a description of your own approach to reading and books it would definitely sound more curious
posted by ginger.beef at 7:34 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]
I am not sure if you meant this question to sound accusatory or judgmental, but if you followed the question with a description of your own approach to reading and books it would definitely sound more curious
posted by ginger.beef at 7:34 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]
I counted 64 in the living room, kitchen, and bar, and that's without going upstairs where the bookcases are. Some of the bookcases are double stacked. I used to have a really bad book purchasing habit, although I finally mostly broke myself of it when my unread books got to be around three full shelves in a bookcase. Even having offloaded some books when we moved twice in a five year span, and having slowed down considerably on new book acquisition once I learned my lesson, I'm still probably in the 500+ tsundoku master group, but I don't feel like counting.
Almost all of my reading is on an e-ink Kindle these days, though. I've even made a habit of using my library cards to check out electronic editions of books I own on paper. My Kindle is smaller, lighter, and better lit than a paper book would be, and I feel no compunction at all about stripping the DRM from a format shifted book that I've already paid for so I can read it at my own speed without worrying about the return window.
posted by fedward at 8:09 AM on March 12
Almost all of my reading is on an e-ink Kindle these days, though. I've even made a habit of using my library cards to check out electronic editions of books I own on paper. My Kindle is smaller, lighter, and better lit than a paper book would be, and I feel no compunction at all about stripping the DRM from a format shifted book that I've already paid for so I can read it at my own speed without worrying about the return window.
posted by fedward at 8:09 AM on March 12
I have maybe 50 physical books. I've moved house 20? 25? times and it's too exhausting and expensive to lug boxes of books around the country. On top of that, living in an apartment means dealing with pests, and books are very stressful to deal with in that regard. I only keep books that have sentimental value, are out of print, or can't be found electronically or at the library.
Speaking of libraries, I now live in a city with one of the best libraries in the world, so there's really no need for me to buy a fiction book ever again.
I've done the same with music. I purged my 100s of records and now I just have one box of vinyl and a few CDs.
posted by Stoof at 8:23 AM on March 12
Speaking of libraries, I now live in a city with one of the best libraries in the world, so there's really no need for me to buy a fiction book ever again.
I've done the same with music. I purged my 100s of records and now I just have one box of vinyl and a few CDs.
posted by Stoof at 8:23 AM on March 12
Went from high lay librarian to low lay librarian due to recent move. Already accumulated a half dozen in the temporary home we're living in. I am prone to not reading all the books I have so that bit in the article is reassuring
The most avid reader I once knew owned zero books and a library card.
posted by mit5urugi at 8:46 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
The most avid reader I once knew owned zero books and a library card.
posted by mit5urugi at 8:46 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
I have around 500 books in the house, most of them read either by my wife or by me. We’re both editors, so the reference texts get heavy use, and I have around 100 cookbooks, all of which get used at least once a year. (I hate hunting for recipes online.) The to-be-read shelf is about 40 deep—a year’s worth of reading if I ever stop adding to it. That doesn’t count my ever-growing collection of books on Spanish history, accumulated for the self-administered thesis I will probably never complete. I think of myself as pretty unsentimental about books—most of what I buy ends up in the little free library down the street—but I can’t imagine ever getting down to just a hundred.
I grew up in a home with several thousand books, so my collection has never seemed large to me.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 8:50 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
I grew up in a home with several thousand books, so my collection has never seemed large to me.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 8:50 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
The most avid reader I once knew owned zero books and a library card.
One year in junior high school I had a weird hole in my schedule and I ended up being the librarian's aide for that hour. She was a voracious reader and offloaded nearly every book she bought after reading it. I was surprised and horrified ("but you work in a library!") but she pointed out she didn't have anywhere to store all those books and she was unlikely to read them again. She said she bought new releases because she didn't want to wait, and she had access to libraries if she ever wanted to read something again, because by that point she wouldn't have to wait.
I still own more books than I need to, but that was honestly one of the best things I learned in junior high school.
posted by fedward at 8:54 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
One year in junior high school I had a weird hole in my schedule and I ended up being the librarian's aide for that hour. She was a voracious reader and offloaded nearly every book she bought after reading it. I was surprised and horrified ("but you work in a library!") but she pointed out she didn't have anywhere to store all those books and she was unlikely to read them again. She said she bought new releases because she didn't want to wait, and she had access to libraries if she ever wanted to read something again, because by that point she wouldn't have to wait.
I still own more books than I need to, but that was honestly one of the best things I learned in junior high school.
posted by fedward at 8:54 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
Years ago, when I was moving apartments, I really reconsidered my book collection (somewhere >1000, I don't remember anymore) and purged all but one bookshelf. I move myself, I don't hire a moving company, and the thought of moving all of those books when the majority of them I knew I would never read again made me realize that I was just hoarding books for no purpose. I had more boxes of books than all other possessions combined, by a large margin.
I do have >400 e-books in Calibre, which is nice since I can carry around a small library on my tablet wherever I go, and it takes up no room in my small apartment. I also managed to *cough* acquire pdf versions of a lot of textbooks and technical references and it is really nice to have a good working library of engineering stuff wherever I go, without needing the internet and to log-in to Knovel or the like.
posted by selenized at 9:08 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
I do have >400 e-books in Calibre, which is nice since I can carry around a small library on my tablet wherever I go, and it takes up no room in my small apartment. I also managed to *cough* acquire pdf versions of a lot of textbooks and technical references and it is really nice to have a good working library of engineering stuff wherever I go, without needing the internet and to log-in to Knovel or the like.
posted by selenized at 9:08 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
Wow. So many thoughtful responses! I feel like, at some point or another, I have felt all of this (except the cull-before-death bit, but who knows).
As a young person, I read voraciously. A book a day was not unusual. The library and the used book store were my usual haunts. We were poor, but I was mostly unaware. My dad had an decent library of books and home and at work, and it seemed not just normal but invisibly part of living.
I have moved many times, and the number of books, while still high, has fluctuated dramatically. A few year ago I was in an accident that injured my neck, and for a long time I was unable to read books for more than a short time. Tried an e-reader, but it never caught on, until I realized I could cast my phone to my TV and read from my favorite chair, and this is still my preferred method of reading.
I have gone though deliberations. Do I have books because I am signaling? I'm sure that's a factor. But as I get older, I don't give a shit, and yet I still like my books on display. Ego? Picked at that one too, and it doesn't ring true for me. At this point in my life, I have a pretty clear idea of who I am, who I am not, and where I fit in the world. So what am I left with?
Comfort: The have always been a part of my life, and I am comfortable in the presence of books. I'll take what comfort I can find in this world. A home (my home) without books feels naked and cold.
Utility: My partner and I have a good collection of reference book. For awhile, the internet was eclipsing this need, but now...now. I don't trust that the internet will continue to provide the same utility I have come to rely on (bought a Thomas Guide book for my area for the first time in...many years). I sincerely hope libraries will continue to exist and thrive, and I will fight to help that be true, but I don't trust that it will be true, and someday soon we may be responsible for educating the next generation in away that has not been true since, maybe the 1930s in the US? Yes...I am a book prepper. I have also downloaded the offline version of Wikipedia. Am I paranoid? Let's pin this and check back in a year.
Memory: This may be the biggest reason I maintain a home library. I have read (and forgotten) countless books over my lifetime. As my eyes settle on a shelf, and I scan the contents, books I haven't read in decades rush back to me. The books are an externalization of my brain, a vital peripheral.
How many books books do I have? What is the proper number of books?
A comfortable amount.
posted by chromecow at 9:13 AM on March 12 [7 favorites]
As a young person, I read voraciously. A book a day was not unusual. The library and the used book store were my usual haunts. We were poor, but I was mostly unaware. My dad had an decent library of books and home and at work, and it seemed not just normal but invisibly part of living.
I have moved many times, and the number of books, while still high, has fluctuated dramatically. A few year ago I was in an accident that injured my neck, and for a long time I was unable to read books for more than a short time. Tried an e-reader, but it never caught on, until I realized I could cast my phone to my TV and read from my favorite chair, and this is still my preferred method of reading.
I have gone though deliberations. Do I have books because I am signaling? I'm sure that's a factor. But as I get older, I don't give a shit, and yet I still like my books on display. Ego? Picked at that one too, and it doesn't ring true for me. At this point in my life, I have a pretty clear idea of who I am, who I am not, and where I fit in the world. So what am I left with?
Comfort: The have always been a part of my life, and I am comfortable in the presence of books. I'll take what comfort I can find in this world. A home (my home) without books feels naked and cold.
Utility: My partner and I have a good collection of reference book. For awhile, the internet was eclipsing this need, but now...now. I don't trust that the internet will continue to provide the same utility I have come to rely on (bought a Thomas Guide book for my area for the first time in...many years). I sincerely hope libraries will continue to exist and thrive, and I will fight to help that be true, but I don't trust that it will be true, and someday soon we may be responsible for educating the next generation in away that has not been true since, maybe the 1930s in the US? Yes...I am a book prepper. I have also downloaded the offline version of Wikipedia. Am I paranoid? Let's pin this and check back in a year.
Memory: This may be the biggest reason I maintain a home library. I have read (and forgotten) countless books over my lifetime. As my eyes settle on a shelf, and I scan the contents, books I haven't read in decades rush back to me. The books are an externalization of my brain, a vital peripheral.
How many books books do I have? What is the proper number of books?
A comfortable amount.
posted by chromecow at 9:13 AM on March 12 [7 favorites]
What is the category for "I have so many books, I opened a used book store?"
posted by ikahime at 9:40 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
posted by ikahime at 9:40 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
What is it about first-worlders and books (owned and/or read) as quantifiable virtue?
I don't consider either a virtue. I just really like reading and, thanks to an abusive, chaotic upbringing, books were my safe space where I'd go hide out for hours and hours and not have to listen to the fighting and not have to subject myself to the abuse. I cannot go to sleep at night unless I've read for about an hour; I suspect that's a result of my childhood as well, because I used reading to empty my brain of what had happened during the day.
My husband, who I adore, isn't a reader. He's a doer; has to be up and moving and doing. I don't respect him any less for not being a reader and he doesn't respect me any less for absolutely needing to escape into a book at any given time.
I suppose reading was an escape and coping mechanism for me at first and then just developed into something that I love spending time doing.
posted by cooker girl at 9:43 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
I don't consider either a virtue. I just really like reading and, thanks to an abusive, chaotic upbringing, books were my safe space where I'd go hide out for hours and hours and not have to listen to the fighting and not have to subject myself to the abuse. I cannot go to sleep at night unless I've read for about an hour; I suspect that's a result of my childhood as well, because I used reading to empty my brain of what had happened during the day.
My husband, who I adore, isn't a reader. He's a doer; has to be up and moving and doing. I don't respect him any less for not being a reader and he doesn't respect me any less for absolutely needing to escape into a book at any given time.
I suppose reading was an escape and coping mechanism for me at first and then just developed into something that I love spending time doing.
posted by cooker girl at 9:43 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
A relevant reposting of a comment I wrote to a recent MeFi post about collections:
"I have been helping a board-game designer and author with a global reputation, who is getting on a bit in age, to find a home for his collection of games, books and papers. As of this week we think we may have found somewhere but it's been a couple of years and lot of work to get this far and the institution in question hasn't started applying for funding to house and look after the collection, fund a PhD student to catalogue and write about it, and all the rest of that. We are probably looking at another eighteen months of work before the gift actually happens, if it does, and this will be a gift and no money will change hands. And this is a designer who, if you know board games, I'd mention their name and you'd go, 'Oh, right.'
And this is not a large collection: the games take up most of one wall of a medium bedroom, plus a few plastic crates of overflow, plus about the same amount of books, and two boxes that came from the estate of another noteworthy UK designer who died in 2020.
You should not assume that anybody apart from yourself and some strangers on eBay care about that rarity from 1985 in the attic. (And, if you're windowpaene, me because that is a seriously impressive games collection - and includes titles from both the designers above.)"
posted by Hogshead at 10:11 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
"I have been helping a board-game designer and author with a global reputation, who is getting on a bit in age, to find a home for his collection of games, books and papers. As of this week we think we may have found somewhere but it's been a couple of years and lot of work to get this far and the institution in question hasn't started applying for funding to house and look after the collection, fund a PhD student to catalogue and write about it, and all the rest of that. We are probably looking at another eighteen months of work before the gift actually happens, if it does, and this will be a gift and no money will change hands. And this is a designer who, if you know board games, I'd mention their name and you'd go, 'Oh, right.'
And this is not a large collection: the games take up most of one wall of a medium bedroom, plus a few plastic crates of overflow, plus about the same amount of books, and two boxes that came from the estate of another noteworthy UK designer who died in 2020.
You should not assume that anybody apart from yourself and some strangers on eBay care about that rarity from 1985 in the attic. (And, if you're windowpaene, me because that is a seriously impressive games collection - and includes titles from both the designers above.)"
posted by Hogshead at 10:11 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
I have a feeling this discussion will produce a share of reminders to plan for your collections: as we all age to the point we need to do something with our stuff, this is a good reminder!
That said, given our current times, it's really hard to know what the hell to do and worry about.
posted by ginger.beef at 10:27 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
That said, given our current times, it's really hard to know what the hell to do and worry about.
posted by ginger.beef at 10:27 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
I speed read, but I spend so much time reading things online. I felt some kind of psychic pull to go to the library this weekend--this usually happens when a book I'd like comes in and I ended up with four--and I decided to put it into Finch to try to read from a physical book (not just ye olde Kindle app) 3x a day. So I finished one hardback book in a few days that way, go me.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:36 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:36 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
I have started cataloguing my books, finally, and so far I have a couple of thousand, not counting the ones I have in storage. I have read the majority of them, and I'm a re-reader, but I'm in the process of deciding which ones I probably won't get to again and slowly weeding those out. I have donated a bunch to a semi-annual free book exchange a friend of mine hosts in a local park. But I've got some fairly scarce titles, and some that I would just never part with (my copy of Lynda Barry's CRUDDY that she drew a bunch of pictures in at a signing!)
A few of them are worth a little money, so I'm trying to make a good record of what's worth selling that whoever gets stuck cleaning out my place can refer to if I happen to get run over or something.
posted by OolooKitty at 11:18 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
A few of them are worth a little money, so I'm trying to make a good record of what's worth selling that whoever gets stuck cleaning out my place can refer to if I happen to get run over or something.
posted by OolooKitty at 11:18 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]
“Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?” —Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library
I have no opinions on books and own an unremarkable number of them, about which I think seldom. But if I had access to Sèvres china I would use it every day and twice on Fridays. That is all.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:25 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
I have no opinions on books and own an unremarkable number of them, about which I think seldom. But if I had access to Sèvres china I would use it every day and twice on Fridays. That is all.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:25 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
This thread has stuck with me as I've gone about my day. I posted above about where my head is in regards to book these days, and how signaling and ego are not what my books mean to me.
True, and.
I think this changes over a lifetime. There were times when my books meant pride at how many books I had. And when I was younger and still finding my people, signaling was a crucial function. In my case, books (and movies/TV) were literally (unbeknownst to me at the time) my mating display. My partner loves to tell the story of how she discovered her interest in me; the BBCs I Claudius in my tape collection, The Victorian Internet and The Dictionary and the Madman on the coffee table. My books about word and phrase origins. Of the preponderance of science fiction and fantasy, nothing was said.
Before social media, books served the same purpose as posts (not primarily, but nonetheless), they shared your worldview, started conversations, gave common reference points.
posted by chromecow at 12:11 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]
True, and.
I think this changes over a lifetime. There were times when my books meant pride at how many books I had. And when I was younger and still finding my people, signaling was a crucial function. In my case, books (and movies/TV) were literally (unbeknownst to me at the time) my mating display. My partner loves to tell the story of how she discovered her interest in me; the BBCs I Claudius in my tape collection, The Victorian Internet and The Dictionary and the Madman on the coffee table. My books about word and phrase origins. Of the preponderance of science fiction and fantasy, nothing was said.
Before social media, books served the same purpose as posts (not primarily, but nonetheless), they shared your worldview, started conversations, gave common reference points.
posted by chromecow at 12:11 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]
I have around 3000 books.
Top autograph? H.G. Wells., purchased at a Half Price Books in San Antonio.
posted by neuron at 12:14 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]
Top autograph? H.G. Wells., purchased at a Half Price Books in San Antonio.
posted by neuron at 12:14 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]
I need to come visit all of you with actual books, I love a space with books. Like Jane the Brown, I'm not able to read on a screen--the time I spend online is enough, my eyes can't take the further 2-3 hours I need in book reading as well. My libraries are all over the house, the art and reference library in my office/art space, the piles of books upstairs because we have to use the bookcases downstairs for glassware, next to cookbooks and reference books on gardening and home repair and wine; the books on the nightstand to keep it from wobbling but also someplace to put a blanket for the cat in the sun. There is a box somewhere with books that fell apart, and I admit I bought replacements for a couple of those titles (the type of book that is very long and detailed world, and when I get up from reading I'm astonished to be here) but the plan is to figure out an art use for those pages. Just to see if anyone would recognize the reference. The only books I've not read belong to my partner, who rarely reads books, but recognizes my need to go away for a while in a book.
posted by winesong at 1:29 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]
posted by winesong at 1:29 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]
The virtue signalling comment above did sound a little bit like it was coming from a place where the person making the comment felt threatened and was counter attacking.
There is no virtue in owning books. Some people wear make up, some people run for pleasure, some people cook voraciously, some people binge watch Star Trek from every generation, some people wear earbuds to shut out the noise of the world. If you don't do those things and don't want to do those things, seeing others do them can make you feel like you are being excluded. None if those practices denotes virtue or the lack of it.
My books represent security to me. They are the number one most effective tool I have for regulating my emotions, the number one most effective tool I have for inspiring creativity, and the number one most effective tool I have for improving my life. I could live more easily without family than I could live without books.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:30 PM on March 12 [9 favorites]
There is no virtue in owning books. Some people wear make up, some people run for pleasure, some people cook voraciously, some people binge watch Star Trek from every generation, some people wear earbuds to shut out the noise of the world. If you don't do those things and don't want to do those things, seeing others do them can make you feel like you are being excluded. None if those practices denotes virtue or the lack of it.
My books represent security to me. They are the number one most effective tool I have for regulating my emotions, the number one most effective tool I have for inspiring creativity, and the number one most effective tool I have for improving my life. I could live more easily without family than I could live without books.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:30 PM on March 12 [9 favorites]
The only real rule I have is that if it’s on the shelf, SOMEONE in the house has to have read it. There’s no point to owning a book you’ve never read and never PLAN to read, is there?
posted by caution live frogs at 9:14 AM on March 12
I've heard both schools of thought on this.
Some people think that you should shelve ONLY the books that you have read, the books that you have a personal connection to.
Others make the equally plausible case that you should shelf ONLY the books that you have not yet read - why would you want to keep books that are generally unlikely to be re-read?
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 1:47 PM on March 12
posted by caution live frogs at 9:14 AM on March 12
I've heard both schools of thought on this.
Some people think that you should shelve ONLY the books that you have read, the books that you have a personal connection to.
Others make the equally plausible case that you should shelf ONLY the books that you have not yet read - why would you want to keep books that are generally unlikely to be re-read?
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 1:47 PM on March 12
I'm 67 and at this point my TBR pile is staggering. My wife and I have at least a few thousand books. I bought hundreds of ebooks for the Kindle app on my iPad because I like the convenience of reading late at night without bothering my wife and cats with light. Well, that has changed because Bezos and his minions are devious fucking tools. No more new ebooks. It's all paper until I die and despite living in a place where new books are hard to come by, I will find a new online store to feed my addiction. As far as disposal of the library my nephew can toss it all in the trash when I'm gone. Same with the CDs and vinyl records. The guitars he might want to sell...
posted by Ber at 2:38 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]
posted by Ber at 2:38 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]
My shelves are mostly TBRs. Books I intend to use or read. The ones I've read are kept only because I can't stand the idea of parting with them. They are the ones I feel like I want to have because they're too good to part with. They are the ones I might depend on when TFG destroys all the things he wants to destroy.
There isn't a room in my house without books. I'm sure I have well over 5000, but I haven't counted. I also always have a box by the front door that's getting filled for Little Free Libraries around town. I only buy books new when I have no other means to get them.
Is it a virtue? Nah. But I do think that when the shit goes to hell, I'll be the neighborhood post-apocalyptic librarian. E-books are for minimalists. I am definitely not a minimalist. I like books I can write in and carry with me and don't depend on electricity for charging to read.
posted by RedEmma at 3:17 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]
There isn't a room in my house without books. I'm sure I have well over 5000, but I haven't counted. I also always have a box by the front door that's getting filled for Little Free Libraries around town. I only buy books new when I have no other means to get them.
Is it a virtue? Nah. But I do think that when the shit goes to hell, I'll be the neighborhood post-apocalyptic librarian. E-books are for minimalists. I am definitely not a minimalist. I like books I can write in and carry with me and don't depend on electricity for charging to read.
posted by RedEmma at 3:17 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]
When I got divorced, I counted all my books at about 3,000. I took maybe 500 - ones I could not bear to part with - when I moved out. A few more moves later, I’d estimate my physical books at about 400, and I’ve only added maybe 15 since I moved in here in 2019. Purchased ebooks are a different story - current number is 606, with 596 read. Nothing beats physical books, though. I dearly love every single one I still have, and can’t imagine parting with any.
posted by gemmy at 4:53 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]
posted by gemmy at 4:53 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]
I have several Ikea Billy bookcases on an outside wall, great insulation. And more on more walls. Lots of TBRs. There are stray books on the stairs, on tables, I don't mind book clutter. I lost an awful lot of books to a flooded basement, sad, but it reminded me that, though they are full of magic, books are also just physical objects (nah, still heartbroken). The moldy books included some of my favorite authors - Jogn Brunner, Laurie Colwin, Margaret Drabble, Time Life Reading Program (ouch, that hurt )series, plus art books - because they were packed in order so they could be unpacked and shelved in order. It's hard to dispose of a bunch of damp books, so they're in the yard next door, composting. The glue on the spines must be plastic, the off spine occasionally surfaces. Years ago, I owned a small book shop. Now I use the library. They are old friends, I love having them and sometimes re-read them. I culled when I moved 16 years ago, culled the TBR shelves not long ago; it's nice to share them. My kid likes the idea of inheriting them, and if I am able to keep the house, it'll all be his. I know someone, not young, who does not seem to read much but I'm too polite to ask if he's dyslexic or something.
when the shit goes to hell, I'll be the neighborhood post-apocalyptic librarian. Now, there's something to aspire to.
posted by theora55 at 6:01 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]
when the shit goes to hell, I'll be the neighborhood post-apocalyptic librarian. Now, there's something to aspire to.
posted by theora55 at 6:01 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]
Another aspiring "post-apocalyptic librarian" here, although most of my books are fiction and therefore not necessarily useful (until you get to the cultural anthropology part of the rebuilding, I guess).
My catalog file currently contains 2,390 entries. That does omit cookbooks, coffee-table books and my spouse's books (which are not nearly as numerous; she's a librarian and knows how to weed). I've read almost all of them (say, more than 95%) at least once.
My books are, as joannemerriam and others have noted above, a comfort and an aide-memoire to me, not so much signaling virtue to others as reminding me of what I've been through to get where I am. During the isolation of COVID-19 they were even more of a refuge.
I don't acquire books as often these days, though; I use our public library for almost every new read. I have never been able to get into ebooks or audiobooks myself, but am glad they exist for those who can.
On one specific practical note: my mass-market paperbacks are in Sterilite® 32-quart containers (#1756), which I know from experience are resistant to moisture and vermin, and can be stacked up to 8 high (but no higher) when full...
posted by cynical biped at 12:30 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]
My catalog file currently contains 2,390 entries. That does omit cookbooks, coffee-table books and my spouse's books (which are not nearly as numerous; she's a librarian and knows how to weed). I've read almost all of them (say, more than 95%) at least once.
My books are, as joannemerriam and others have noted above, a comfort and an aide-memoire to me, not so much signaling virtue to others as reminding me of what I've been through to get where I am. During the isolation of COVID-19 they were even more of a refuge.
I don't acquire books as often these days, though; I use our public library for almost every new read. I have never been able to get into ebooks or audiobooks myself, but am glad they exist for those who can.
On one specific practical note: my mass-market paperbacks are in Sterilite® 32-quart containers (#1756), which I know from experience are resistant to moisture and vermin, and can be stacked up to 8 high (but no higher) when full...
posted by cynical biped at 12:30 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]
I own something like 600 physical books (and have either wholly read or read important bits of nearly all of them). This is after taking about 200 books to the opshop preparatory to an intercontinental move. About 50 of them are a 'collection' of a specific type of book. Another 50 or so are still with me because of the notes from people I love on the flyleaves. I was raised by an English teacher and an engineer, both of whom collect books with wild abandon (their house currently has several thousand books). After my third international move I discovered A Strategy which is that I get a book from the library or as an ebook first and only get my own physical copy if I have a) read it and b) actually want to read it again. In 40 years or so I fully expect to be living in a library with occasional furniture in it.
And (just counting) oh okay this is a problem - 5142 ebooks, most of which I have not read (yet), and maybe three of which I have bought, and about 600 of which are portable duplicates of my physical books, and some of which are probably duplicates of each other because a lot are from Gutenberg Canada, whose native filenaming leaves something to be desired.
Unfortunately most of the physical books are on the other side of the world, and I can bring them over when my living situation gets stable. Here I only have about 10 that I actually own, and a constantly rotating cast from the library. All but one of the 10 are what I class as touchstones - books I have read and reread and allowed to shape the person I am, and refuse to be without, in at least some format, ever, and have duplicates of on my phone and ereader and every computer and backup disc I have. (A Bible, Wild Space, a cookbook with notes in the margins from generations of my family, Rocket Propulsion Elements, a prayer book, Ignition!, Wiley Handbook of Chemical Incompatibilities, The Gift of Fear, Stone Butch Blues, and the Nonesuch Donne.)
posted by ngaiotonga at 7:29 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]
And (just counting) oh okay this is a problem - 5142 ebooks, most of which I have not read (yet), and maybe three of which I have bought, and about 600 of which are portable duplicates of my physical books, and some of which are probably duplicates of each other because a lot are from Gutenberg Canada, whose native filenaming leaves something to be desired.
Unfortunately most of the physical books are on the other side of the world, and I can bring them over when my living situation gets stable. Here I only have about 10 that I actually own, and a constantly rotating cast from the library. All but one of the 10 are what I class as touchstones - books I have read and reread and allowed to shape the person I am, and refuse to be without, in at least some format, ever, and have duplicates of on my phone and ereader and every computer and backup disc I have. (A Bible, Wild Space, a cookbook with notes in the margins from generations of my family, Rocket Propulsion Elements, a prayer book, Ignition!, Wiley Handbook of Chemical Incompatibilities, The Gift of Fear, Stone Butch Blues, and the Nonesuch Donne.)
posted by ngaiotonga at 7:29 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]
No more new ebooks. It's all paper until I die and despite living in a place where new books are hard to come by, I will find a new online store to feed my addiction.
I also abandoned kindle, and mostly moved to using Libby to read library ebooks and standard ebooks for really nicely done public domain books (which are also free). If you're looking for options to keep using your tablet, they are worth keeping in mind.
posted by selenized at 9:43 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]
I also abandoned kindle, and mostly moved to using Libby to read library ebooks and standard ebooks for really nicely done public domain books (which are also free). If you're looking for options to keep using your tablet, they are worth keeping in mind.
posted by selenized at 9:43 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]
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*enters room*
posted by HearHere at 2:27 PM on March 11