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.)

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

I've never counted. I am afraid to count. And that's after a couple of recent cullings. Sigh.

Di

[shalanar.livejournal.com]

*concurs*

Our book collection is somewhere over 2000 right now. I used to have an exact number, but had a complete failure of my inventory database a couple years back, and haven't restarted that epic project. Our house is less than 1000 square feet. We converted our spare room into a library, and it works. No clutter at all. We can even still have guests overnight. Not a problem.

600 books is not a huge amount.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

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

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I only know because kniedzw did the thirteenth labor of Hercules and entered them all into LibraryThing.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

We've got 1270 sq. ft. right now, but come California, we're probably going to have to figure out how to cram ourselves (and, more to the point, our books) into less.

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Wow. Can I borrow him? Cause my husband won't touch it with a ten foot pole. Or a fifty foot pole.

Di

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

He'd probably bake something for you while he was at it, and then I'm afraid I'd never get him back.

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

A bibliophile who willingly limits the size of her stash?

Pffft! I say!

[celeber.livejournal.com]

I love books. I love reading, writing, editing, stroking, re-reading, etc. I can not even fathom letting go of my collection. I have boxes upon boxes of books in my garage because my desk and dresser had gravitiy defying stacks upon them that started to seem a bit hazardous. I box them set them in the garage on one of the shelves in hopes that one day I will have an enormous library that can house all of my little treasures.
I can not even tell you how many books I own, or that my husband owns, or that any of my three kids own. I can tell you there are books in every room of the house and taking over all the bookshelves.
Parting with them? Not an option. Asking my husband to part with his? Grounds for divorce. Asking my children to part with theirs? Disownment.

[breathingbooks.livejournal.com]

That article is just sad. I passed 600 before college and that was with my mom having to write checks to pay our library fines (which were, er, mostly my fault). My collection is also tiny compared to those of many, many people on librarything. It's a pity the author didn't do some research.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Obviously, this woman needs to be told about The Rule: Every person gets three categories of things that are not clutter. By definition.

Mine are garden plants, quilt fabric (sixteen large bins worth so far [g]), and books.

I have been known to weed (a librarian term) my books on occasion, but only if I'm headed to Powells in Portland (www.powells.com), which makes it an exercise in futility since I always come back with more than I left with, anyway [g]. I have no idea of the total number. I do have bookcases in every single room of my house, however, even one of the bathrooms.

The sort of thinking promulgated by this woman is why I will never, ever entrust my home to a professional decorator, even if I had the money. Have you seen most professionally decorated rooms???

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

200? Pft. If I include manga, I have more than that in my to-be-read pile. Actually, I may not have to inculde the manga.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Circa 3500-4000 "book" books here, with over 2500 comics related books/collections.

We won't talk about the number of actual comic books.

Btw, the other "interesting" bit about the article was that it seems to be focused only on their attic. No mention of any books downstairs, or any being easily accessible.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

1100 books in 4 rooms in NYC?? Wow, they should see my apartment, with over 3000 in 2 rooms. I'm with you - this person is clueless. :)

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

Yes on the home decorating! Only slightly more disturbing than the beautifully color-coordinated rooms with no bookshelves are the rooms with a bookshelf and books that all match. As though the well-bred home kept a shelf of identically bound volumes as a... statement of intellectualism. Or something. *shudder*

[kleenestar.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I read more books in a YEAR than this woman kept.

We moved into a 400 square foot NYC studio with over 2,000 books. The collection has grown significantly since then; I've got 4K+ cataloged and a bunch of boxes still to go. That article is a joke.

[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.

[mastadge.livejournal.com]

Get a load of this one (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/garden/15library.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin)! Now there's a bibliophile!

[janni.livejournal.com]

We stopped counting around 3000, but that was some years ago. I'm sure it's more now. In, well, five small rooms instead of four.

"Are the pages so brittle and yellow that you're never going to read them?" If so, she says, donate.

Because even though you find the book unreadable, it makes sense to expect someone else to read it? Ummm.

And second, "be realistic about the format you like to read them in." Most people never re-read paperbacks they've kept for a while, especially the smaller ones, she says.

Says who? Around here paperbacks get reread more because they're, like, portable.

[mastadge.livejournal.com]

And I'm at a count of 2,673 books on LibraryThing -- and, at a guess, have about half of them entered. That's about 2000 prose and poetry, 700 comics. Comics are almost done. 'nother 2000+ books as I have time to enter 'em.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I'll bite; how are you managing to keep 2000 (now 4000 in the same place?) in a 400 ft^2 place in terms of sheer space?

[kathleenfoucart.livejournal.com]

Yay for being a (http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=kfoucart)!

I don't have all mine in yet, but I do have a spreadsheet that should have everything in it, and, with my purchase of Midnight Never Come the list now says I'm at 1900. :)

[brigidsblest.livejournal.com]

*rolls eyes*

My lifetime total was over 10,000. I got rid of over 5K when I moved to Michigan in 1996; that was a mistake, as the friends I moved in with didn't stay friends, and I much would have rather kept the books, since I was going to lose the friends anyway.

I underwent another voluntary cut last year; I let my f-list here on LJ plunder the books I was getting rid of, so long as they paid the postage to mail them out. I got rid of about another thousand books then, and currently am just a hair under 5,000, with no intention of stopping anytime soon.

600? What a piker.

[brigidsblest.livejournal.com]

I did the same thing last year. Took me a month or so, but I've been keeping up with new acquisitions since then, which is easier.