how many books do you actually own? and keep in your house?

[juicychops]

i have about 250 books in a book shelf in my front room. ive read about half of them, and the other half i will get around to once ive finished my degree at the end of the year- im planning on reading straight for a good few months! but they do look quite cluttered now

but the thing is, i like keeping the books i read. i dont know why, but i just do. i would rather buy and keep one than borrow it from the library. and when i read them i like to keep them all nice and neat and try not to bend the spine too much so that they still look reasonably new on my shelf

does anyone else keep loads of books like me? or am i just silly?

darlene - Billy Bookcases are from Ikea.

Hundreds-certainly far too many to be bothered to count.

swanriver I was a bookseller too....there may be a connection!

I don't get rid because although I hadn't heard about the Tory Party link I guess I like to identify myself as not a Tory intelligent more than I mind about the clutter.

Nickelbabe - But where are they going to go??? Maybe I can get a Latin grammar for my kindle. Off to look now.

Indeed nickel...but what can you expect from guys you pick up meet at the launderette ? He was no Nick Kamen

more than 500... i don't know, but there's 5 big bookcases full, plus kitchen books etc.

i can't bear selling them or giving them away, even if i don't like the book.

Dh and I combined our (substantial) libraries when we got together. When we moved house we had 99 boxes of books and since then we (actually I - I'm the real bookworm ) have acquired loads more. I started cataloguing them on one of those online sites and I'm well past 2000 now, although tbh if you'd asked me to take a guess, I'd have said we had far more, so it's interesting how your perceptions work.

There are 11 sets of bookshelves of various sizes in the house - they're in every room except the bathroom. One set of shelves covers a whole wall of the room, and most of the shelves are double- or triple-stacked. I love my books with a passion and not having them around would make me feel very anxious and just, well, wrong.

I'll never forget watching a TV show called 'Life Laundry' years ago and the bossy American woman who was the 'de-clutterer' said to one woman 'who needs to keep books? You've read them - just get rid of them. Nobody needs to keep books.'

I wanted to punch her.

oh, now I know I don't have enough books :(

when I went off to uni, my dad packed my books into bread crates.
I had 3 full bread crates of books.

When I next moved house, I had a few more boxes than that!

at the Life Laundry woman.
I would have looked at her like this then punched her.

But I think the Life Laundry woman is right. If the books are dragging you down, and creating dust and disharmony, and just stopping you reading NEW books, they have become just possessions like all possessions which you don't NEED.
How can you need that many books. I know I don't. I can only read say 8 books simultaneously. There is a library down the road, an number of secondhand bookshops to buy new reads from...
In the end they are not sacred objects, they are STUFF like anything else.

Dh's uncle gave us an enormous box of Lawrence Durrell books. They've been sitting on the landing for ten years. Unread. They are going to the charity shop tomorrow. And that's final.

Librarything says 1592 but I have been very lax in updating this last year so I estimate 500+ more.

DH built me some bookcases in alcoves for mother's day which has made all the difference, spacewise, in the house.

I used to have 3000+ and turned an entire bedroom into a library. However we have moved twice since then, once internationally and both times we have had to move them ourselves. There is no greater encouragement to pass a book on than the knowledge that you have to pack and move it-and unpack the other end. I learnt then that not all books have the same value to me and have been able to be a bit more ruthless.

I love being around books- its all the stored knowledge and potential that I like and I have spent so many happy hours with my head in a book. Yesterday DH, DD, DS and I all curled up on the sofa together, all reading our own books in peace and quiet which was lovely.

Beware of getting rid of books. I accidentally sent a "special" book of DD1's to the school fete. The child who bought it bounced up to her and said look x was this yours it's got your name in it.
Mum's name was mud and in the end I bribed the child who'd bought it into swapping it for her choice of a new book.

But my books aren't dragging me down, swanriver - I'm perfectly happy to have them and they don't impede my life in any way. On the contrary - I'm with Firkytoodle and the 'stored knowledge' feeling. I get rid of lots of books; there's a healthy throughput of things I read and don't need to hold onto. I just choose to keep certain things and there are quite a lot of them!

oh, and the thousands of book I have are part of my zombie plan. so I can heat up a can of beans for me and my family

I have upwards of a thousand. I love my bookcases as they make the house feel warm. I also love it when I stay at a friend's house and she has a little bookcase in the guest bedroom that she changes the contents of freqently.

Bliss.

I do get a little of what swanriver is saying, I did feel quite weighed down by my books at one point but that was due to:

-having lots of 'worthy' books on my shelves that I felt I ought to read including ones people had given me
-having lots of half-finished books on my shelves that I couldnt finish (directly related to the above I think) and
-keeping everything and ending up with lots of books I had read but didnt like for one reason or another.
-not having enough time to read at one point and all the stacked shelves making me feel guilty
-inadequate storage in a smaller house which made everything feel cluttered and dusty.

I solved the first three by getting rid of all those books and replacing them with ones that excited and interested me and DS grew out of his colic/medical problems which solved the fourth. DH built me new bookcases for the last one.

I only keep books I loved and want to read again, want DD/DS to have access to, lifechanging books, books I am unsure about (have reread some of these recently and got more out of them as I am at a different stage of life now) and books I havent read yet (by far the largest group atm!).

I have too many to count. Recently moved after selling my house and I'm so happy to have them everywhere once again. The selling agent took one look at them and declared they would all have to be put away out of sight or no-one would buy the house (she called books 'clutter', and yes, I wanted to punch her), so we compromised, but I am so glad to be 'cluttered' again.

I packed and moved them all myself and would do it again gladly.

When I moved house I got rid of any books that weren't either a) useful or b) loved (a la William Morris). I still have lots and lots of books but they are all brilliant.

I love to be able to go and look something up or leap up in the middle of someone talking about something and say 'you must read this - you would love it/it will answer all your questions/it's very funny'.

God that's probably the wankiest thing I've ever admitted to on here

Life laundry woman doesn't say you should get rid of all your books, she says you should be selective - you don't need to keep every trashy airport novel and out-of-date textbook - and those you keep should be on shelves not just piled up willy-nilly, cluttering up every room and collecting dust so you can't find a book when you need it and you can't find anything else either.

but I collect "out-of-date" textbooks!

they make up my history section.
One of the things I love most is goingthrough old editions, or old science books/atlases etc to see how things have changed.
I've got a couple of different editions of my Materials Science book - one from the 60s and one foerm the 90s when I did my degree. It's fascinating to see how things have changed.
Also, I have a School Atlas that is dated 1941 - when I was doing History at school, it was very, very useful, as then the country lines were correct for the time we were studying.
It also became useful because of the splitting up of Eastern Europe at that time, and my out-of-date atlas suddenly became more relevant to the Political landscape than the atlas that was only 2-3 years old!

If you keep these books, then your children can use them for history, too.

I have a Boy's Book from 18.... (can't remember the exact date- but late in the century) that talks about how wonderful it would be if we could fly!
The closest they had at the time was helium balloons.

much more interesting than books on history that have been written now because they're showing it from the perspective of those who lived through it.
(and that's called Primary Evidence when you're studying history)

As few as possible, this is why public libraries are wonderful. I only keep ones I really treasure & can imagine wanting to see on my shelves to read again or remind me how good they are or to encourage DC to read.
Just dust collectors, otherwise. "Stuff" I own always oppresses me, the less the better.
That said, my "few as possible" probably includes about 120 fiction and 600-ish non-fiction (many biographies), with several hundred more volumes for each of DC.

No idea. Thousands. I had a couple of thousand before I got married and that was getting on for 15 years ago. Since then, I've acquired all my parents' books, my younger brother's, and quite a few from my grandmother which she had as a child, as well as all dd's, dh's and the books we've got since we married. Needless to say, everyone in my family is a bookworm!

We've got quite a few anyway.

Swan river! You're getting rid of Lawrence Durrell???? He's fantastic! Won't you want to reread them one day?

I don't know ..I don't keep every book I buy though

Loads - Reading my favourite thing & I'll read almost anything!! I love my books, some are part of my memories & have impacted hugely on my life. Most are a bit dog-eared, some v. dog-eared but books are there to be read and loved and mine certainly are :)

Thousands, but find it hard to take leave of any of them, even when feeling cluttered. PLEASE any tips on storing them so that they don't look like clutter? I agree they can add warmth (in all ways) to a house, but at the moment mine just look like clutter to me.

Been looking up new ideas www.readallaboutit.open-books.org/?p=905 but most of them are too wacky to be practical.