bitch, please.

[swan_tower]

Mildly curious, I followed this link to an article about culling down one's book collection. It appears to part of a series wherein the writer chronicles the process of organizing her life. Okay, let's go.

She is, by her own admission, a "total bibliophile." Apparently her parents crammed 1,100 books into their apartment!

. . . er, okay, if you don't have a lot of space (and they had four rooms in New York), then I suppose that's a lot. The writer? Her book collection -- the combined possessions of herself and her husband -- "peaked at 600."

Please.

By the end of the article, they're down to 200. Our fiction collection consists of more books than her parents had at their incredible height. According to LibaryThing, we own more urban fantasy than this woman now has in her entire collection.

I'm not out to play a game of one-upsmanship; I'm sure there are people reading this who think our 2,260 books are a paltry few. But I just had to roll my eyes at the presentation of 600 as a huge pile of books that must be cut down for the salvation of one's household. I don't think the WaPo knows what a real bibliophile is.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I got to the point where they said of someone, "She has even allowed her husband, Mike, to keep his collection of science-fiction paperbacks from the early 1980s," and I thought, "And he has even allowed her to keep their marriage! What a deal!" and quit reading.

I know the women who make their husbands get rid of their SF paperbacks or hide them in the closet in the basement, and if being more bibliophilic than them is the grand and shining standard, I am just no longer interested in reading that person's opinions on the subject.

(Maybe there are men making their wives get rid of their SF paperbacks or hide them. But I've never met them or heard of them.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I totally forgot to even mention that one.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I will never, never understand the sort of marriage where people "let" each other do basic things, and need "permission" to do other basic things. That sort of control just creeps me out.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, that might have been the perspective of the author, about the professional organizer friend, than how it actually worked in the organizer's marriage.

Having had to deal with my parents' book collection after they died, and that without the pressure of a landlord, I can sympathize with such an experience leaving one skittish about large collections.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

My ex just hated me reading. I have no idea how we lasted three years.

[(Anonymous)]

On a messageboard I used to frequent there was this guy whose wife was making him cull his book collection. I replied that if my partner would ever try to make me throw out my book or anything else that is important to me (action figures, dolls, antiques) I know what would get thrown out of the house and it wouldn't be the books.

Cora

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Reasonable debate about what to keep and what to discard is fine; if it comes to force, though, something has gone wrong.