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Thursday 30 June 2011

Hmmm... Book Numbers...

Booking Through Thursday

Size Matters

What's the largest your personal library has ever been?  What's the greatest number of books you've ever owned at one time?  (Estimates are fine.)

Is your collection NOW the biggest it's ever been?  Or have you down-sized?

What's the fewest number of books you've ever owned (not counting your pre-reading years)?

Gosh...  Tricky questions.  I have always preferred not to actually count all my books because that might make me realise I probably have more books than I actually need.  This is only an estimate because I didn't venture into the attic which also has shelving for books...  I have 10 large bookcases (6 shelves per book case and 1 metre wide).  The novels, autobiographies etc are packed fill their shelves at 2 books deep and averaging 15 books high...  approximately 30 shelves of these 2700 books... and about 30 shelves of non-fiction including recipe books, gardening, art, knitting, patchwork, historty etc...  Okay, that works out at approximately 4000 books in our house (I haven't included all the books that live on shelves in the attic nor all my books that have crept down to inhabit bookshelves in my mum's house... they would be another story for another day)...

I think I can quite honestly say that my book collection is the largest it has ever been.  Now and again, I try to send a few to the charity shop or I sell a few on Amazon but invariable a month later I am searching for the book that I thought I no longer wanted.  I do try periodically to get rid of books that I don't think I will read again or the odd book that I thought I would enjoy reading but never did.  No choice really because I am running out of space and do have piles of books sitting around in front of book cases and use the tops of the bookcases as additional bookcase shelving.

I cannot remember not having books.  My mum always had lots of books.  When we were in our early teens my brother and I used to love going around all the second hand bookshops in Smithfield Market looking for new interesting ones to read.  Then I went to university and continued working my way around the second hand bookshops in Leeds.  When I was travelling home...  (my mum had a friend of a friend who offered to put my stuff into the back of their lorry on their way back from dropping off a load)  I think he was a little shocked when my boxes of books started to come down the 4 flights of stairs...  I even got rid of half of my clothes as I knew I only had a certain amount of space... but the books all came home with me.

I suppose the thing that has changed is what I like to read...  I don't read the classics Hardy, Austen, Dickens etc quite as often as I should and find myself reaching for a fantasy novel more often...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a HUGE number of books!

Yvonne said...

I found it's so easy to accumulate books, but not so easy to read them all. LOL

Anonymous said...

Ha ha, I love it that you got rid of clothes to make space, but not books.

Lisa (Lisa's World of Books) said...

You did much better with estimating that I did. I would probably be around the same.

My BTT answer.

Kristy Powers said...

Oh, I love your blog. I love the name especially! Some of my best days in childhood were spent at second-hand bookstores. We had a day every year when we went to The Red Balloon bookstore in the city with gift certificates we had received for Christmas. We always got a treat at a nearby bakery afterward. Heaven!

Laurel-Rain Snow said...

Yes, that's a lot of books...I had to laugh at the part where you gave some away, and then had to buy them again. I've done that! Some that I hadn't read in years, and felt I just had to have them again....

Here's MY BTT POST

Anonymous said...

Wow! Must be book heaven in your home!

Anonymous said...

Wow! that's an amazing number of books.

here's mine:

http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/06/booking-through-thursday_30.html

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