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?

About a thousand. When new books come in, some old ones have to move out. We keep the charity shop well stocked.

Resurrection
the best way is to store like together - so each shelf has the same publisher, or the same sized books on it.
(you cna be more efficient with shelving too, then - because you can fit shelves into bookcases according to size, so you don't have huge gaps)
what about the landing?
Most houses have that useless bannister going across the top of the stairs - it's waist height, so you could fit 3 shelves along there.
above the stairs in that gap?
what about above doors? you can usually fit a row of paperbacks across the tops of doors.

also, we have a long living room, so we've divided it by having bookcases along behind the settee.

ooh, yes, i like that stairs one!
one to think about when you're renovating your house

I want that stairs one too!

In the whole house including the children's I'm going to guess and say about 700-800, but possibly more. I'm always getting rid of paperbacks, though I tend to keep reference books and classic fiction.

I have about 160 cookery books alone.

Too many to count. We have a decent-sized study that is booklined around 2 1/2 walls floor to ceiling, several bookshelves full in the childrens' rooms and piles here and there.

Last time I counted (beore having dc, when i had more time on my hands) we had about 3000. Must be more now - another 500? About 1000 arer boxed up in the attic, the rest are on bookshelves around the house.

Has anyone been along to tell us book-o-philes that we are a bunch of middle class smug stealth boasters yet?

I think books look tidier if you have them in floor to ceiling shelves and they are crammed in together. And stashed by size. I have shelves that go all around the top of the bannisters upstairs which are great.

fellatio - not yet. Surprisingly :o

we're decorating our beroom at the moment, and have moved stuff around (thus creating a bigger room than we had before (it narrows at one end - by putting the bed in the narrow end, we've widened the room)

anyway, point is, that now we have got a whole wall (not a wide wall, inbetween the door and the wardrobe) that we didn't have before (too close to bed), that we've decided to put a tall bookcase against, so that we can accommodate more books

Christine - agree - and people who put ornaments on bookshelves and then use bookends to separate them - they're just odd.
put the ornaments on the windowsill and use the bookcases for books

Ok, going to break with the consensus- probably only a few hundred between DH and I. Couple of reasons why

• I borrow a lot of books from other people, and lend on a "just pass it down the line" basis.
• I give what I've read to charity shops as I never read the same book twice
• I have a Kindle
• We live overseas and move a lot (every couple of years) so try to keep personal effects to a minimum as storage tends to be crappy in rentals

and

• "Stuff" I own always oppresses me, the less the better. Yes! Me too! I always say this and people think I'm odd, so glad there are at least two of us. I always used to say that if you cant get your life in your car, you've got too much stuff

I agree with sentiment entirely. Except with books.

TheBride - we have moved a lot, too, and the effect has been that we've bought lots of books from different places! Thing is, it's a bit like saying that it's inconvenient having to move your children as well - it is of course, but you do it anyway. Thus the favourite books move too, and the rest go into storage containers (apparently you can't do that with the dc). And we pick our rented flats on the basis of shelf space (oh yeah, and bedrooms for the dc to sleep in!). The dc are amassing huge book collections too.

I do give away the ones I don't like (books, not children) and use the library too. They just seem to keep arriving.

I have loads as I used to be a bookseller but need to de-clutter so seriously wondering about getting rid of some :(

you can't get rid of any, Fanjo!

the bookseller lives inside you, you know.
you can take the bookseller out of the bookshop, but you can't take the bookshop out of the bookseller!

sticky - love your logic - i'd sooner leave the children behind

sticky Prob shouldnt admit this, but I can't do storage- it makes me feel weighed down with stuff. It's either in this house or in the bank, or I don't own it. We had some bits in storage when we were in the ME, and then I got in an irrational stress about it and told my mum just to e-bay it all and keep the money for her troubles. However, the closest I come to liking "stuff" is books, so I can definitely see why people love them and I do feel jealous when I go to people's houses in the UK and they have walls of lovely floor to ceiling bookshelves in their 20ft x15ft sitting room with all their books on them.

My problem is, HK apartments are tiny, I hate clutter, and I hate clutter more than I love owning books. I do keep my hardbacks though. Am I redeemed?

I do understand that, TheBride. Certainly one of the first times we moved away, we left pretty much everything in self-storage in Dublin (apart from what would fit in the car. Guess how many books you can fit in a Fiat Punto?!). When we came back, I felt weird about the stuff we had left, and would have happily ebayed the lot, had ebay been invented at that stage (especially the iron and the hoover!).

But books are my little friends!

You are certainly redeemed though, in the circumstances. There was a film where I think it was people in Japan were living in little horizontal broomcupboards to save space. That's where I am imagining you, totally surrounded by hardbacks!

We have 3 floor to ceiling Ikea Billy bookcases in the hall, 2 in the lounge ( but I am looking to put another in there), 2 in the dining room, 1 on the landing, 3 in my DC1's room, 1 in DC2&3's room, 1 in our room ( and moving things to add another one). All bookcases are double stacked and jigger to get as many shelves in as possible. There are still books piled in all sorts of corners as well. We love our books and so do the DC. We reread tons and buy lots from charity shops as well as new.

My dream is to have a house with a library ( still have tons of bookcases elsewhere though :) )

oh I agree with you all. Have loads of books and still growing! LOVE LOVE LOVE going into bookshops so calming, ALWAYS judge people by their books!! and I am also studying with the OU for a degree so two more years and I can read all the books I keep buying. I also have a list of books I want to buy- Amazon and the Book Depository is lethal!

ooohhh a library! Heaven!

Delia something like this'll do me, with the living quarter's tagged on the side

No idea. 1000s. Some in every room including the loos and hall. One staircase has books on every step.