I read an article recently about famous people and how many books they have/had in their personal libraries. I learned that, of the people mentioned, Karl Lagerfeld had the most at 300,000 books and Hannah Arendt had the least at 4,000 books. Michael Jackson had 10,000+ books and Thomas Jefferson had 6,487. You can read the entire article here.
That got me thinking about how many books I have in my own house. I did a very rough count and came up with (drum roll, please) between 2,000 and 3,000 books. Most are in bookcases in one room, others are scattered around the house, including a bookcase filled with about 100 books signed by the authors.
The title of the article I read was “10 Famous Book Hoarders”. Apparently, anyone who has 1,000 books or more is considered a book hoarder. I prefer to think of myself as a book preserver. I have all sorts of books from mysteries (by far the largest percentage of my library) to books on linguistics, books on the Coptic and Egyptian languages, history books, technical books like those on the Jave programming language, books on forensics and writing... The list goes on.
Okay, okay, I haven’t read every book in my house, but I do intend to read them. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Apparently, there’s a word for that: the Japanese word tsundoku – acquiring reading materials and letting them pile up without reading them.
I know I’ve made this vow before, but I am going to make more of an effort in the new year to read more of these books in my library.
How about you? How large is your library? Do you consider yourself a book hoarder?
2 comments:
Glad you asked. I can't believe there aren't more of us jumping in to confess.
Okay, so a bunch of years ago, I decided I needed to catalogue all my books, and being an Excel spreadsheet ace, I went for it. Brought books to my desk in piles of 20 or so, and went at it.
It's a work of art, and very useful. I have lots of various sheets by category, and lost of formulas and totals and stuff. Columns for date bought, where bought, inscriptions, special notes. And I make sure I add in every new book I acquire, and remove those I off-load (to their own worksheet)
At some point, I paused, having catalogued every book in my living space. Currently 1393.
I never really did get down to the basement to all those shelves in my Quilting room and my workshop. Or those cartons... Maybe, oh, a few hundred more?
Thanks for asking.
That is an impressive bit of work, cataloging all those books and putting them in a spreadsheet. I do not have the energy to do that but, if I did, I'd probably not buy two copies of the same book like I do on occasion.
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