40-or-so cookbooks in the kitchen.
20-or-so travel books, 8 or 9 coffee table books, in the living room.
15-or-so bathroom books.
30-or-so books in the guest room.
10-or-so books in varying states of being read in the bedroom.
And hundreds of books in the dining room in two bookcases, two deep in one bookcase, with even more lying in front of the second layer on their sides on each shelf. I can never find anything. We need more bookcases but the wife doesn’t like them (no idea why not).
Hello my name is Phlospher and I’m a **Bibliophile. ** We have more books than silverware…
No books in the kitchen - gotta keep ‘em out of the line of fire! None in the bathroom either - just 2 issues of CarCraft, 3 of MoparAction and the latest Summit Racing Equipment catalog. Elsewhere, though…a bit cluttered. Twelve 3’ x 6’ overstuffed bookcases (front and back layers, books on top of others…) Looks like about 20 stacks on the floor, from about 2 to 3 feet high. And I just found 2 boxes in the utility room that I’d forgotten about…hot dog! My great-uncle’s anatomy textbook from 1929 is on top…this could be fun!
This feels like a normal quantity of books to have around; we always had lots of books when I was a kid. Probably on the low side for a lot of folks here…
And a cat and a bottle of port.
I don’t like the implications of having magazines in the bathroom. I mean yeah I do it like everyone else but I hide the evidence. I’m not saying this is normal. I just feel like if I kept them in my bathroom PEOPLE WOULD BE ON TO ME! Its like having a neon sign saying “THIS IS WHERE THE POOPING HAPPENS” again…not saying its normal.
My bathroom is huge. And it was just about the only room left that had space for a bookshelf*. Of course, my friends were not surprised, they refer to my decorating scheme as “bookcase eclectic” as it is. I think the “worst” comment I ever got was “Huh. Well that’s different”.
*(Ironically enough, I am rarely in the bathroom long enough to read anything.)
I would, except I’m scared of heights.
For the OP, hmmm… I think I have about 10 cookbooks in the kitchen, a shitload in my room, and my sister has a bunch in the living room, plus my computer, design, and language books over my computer. None in her room, none in the bathroom (they’d get all damp and stuff and that would suck)
ever since i saw the adams boy’s “presidential” library in quincy, i’ve wanted one like that.
a huge one room building with wall to wall, floor to ceiling books. big tables, and chairs in the middle. and yes indeed, there is a ladder.
there is only one book in the bathroom, all other rooms are 20+ the library is 100s +.
Lotta books (100+) in the living room, lotta books in the spare bedroom, about 15 cookbooks in the kitchen (the pantry, really). A few magazines in the bathrooms, no books. Piles of data in the home office where I’m typing this; no books visible, but I put shelves in the closet to support my archived magazines on trains, planes, film and strange phenomena.
I too would love to have one of those private libraries with floor-to-ceiling shleves of rich, dark wood, but the place I’m living in, while nice in many ways, is totally unsuitable.
I’m not one to fuck around. I have 42 in my room (highlights include Necronomicon in Spanish, the Origin of Species, an old HP calculator manual about the size of Necronomicon, a Torah I got in Air Force boot camp, and a small guide to Modern Hebrew for tourists) and five gargantuan text/reference books in the dining room I converted to a home office, and those are about the only places I go in the house.
ETA: No books in the bathroom. I read Language Log updates and the Washington Post in there, both on my Palm.
Depends on what you call a room, and what you call a book. My apartment is either three or five “rooms”. Every room has at least ten books in it. If you count the Pop Scis in the bathroom as “books”, then every room has at least 30. If you then combine my bedroom, the kitchen and the computer room into one room, since there’s nothing really dividing them, then every room has at least 50.
The upstairs closet has about 200, which are the ones that aren’t in storage. The storage unit contains the ones that I didn’t take to the Paperback Exchange, and I’d hesitate to guess the total, though it’s well over a thousand.
Sadly, the majority of these books are from my younger (i.e., school) days. Due to time constraints, I currently read about ten books a year purely for pleasure. I suppose I could read more – I’m not a slow reader – but as my tastes become more specific, it becomes harder (and thus takes more time and effort) to select books that I’m enthusiastic about reading. All I seem to be able to muster these days are arcane philosophy texts and insipid manga. On the plus side, it does make my bookshelf properly confusing to visitors. 
The removals men a few years back commented that he’d never seen as many books as our house had, so I guess we’re fairly bookish.
Easily over 200 in the house, not including the library withdrawals and others in the garage. To me a house just looks horribly empty without books in it.
We’ve got nearly 300 in the living room, another 60 in the study and a few boxes still to be unpacked in the shed.
Oh, and a couple of dunny-readers as well!!
Not to mention the library rooms for the more arcane books that must be chained in place to keep them from flying away, and the rooms that drift into other dimensions…
At least I have the books, the big table for spreading out notebooks and computer, the fireplace, and the cozy, overstuffed sofa (called Sophy for Sophia, goddess of wisdom), and a decent reading light. Temporarily catless, but I assume one will appear, as soon as memories of deceased Best Cat in Universe fade a little more.
I’d love that, but I had to settle for one of those little chairs that unfolds into a step ladder, because I do need help reaching the top shelves in the study. I managed an overstuffed chair, too, but no cat or fireplace in there.
Bathroom, only 3 at the moment. (I think Deb was cleaning some stuff and moved the others.)
Library, 1400 - 1700
Bedroom, 300+
Son’s bedroom, only around 20
Daughter’s bedroom, 200+
Living Room, only 40 or so
Great Room/Kitchen, 800+
Basement, 1,000+
Car, 2
Me.
I have a room in my house as a dedicated library, but it is by now seriously too small (no, I have no clue as to the number of books I own) - even with a major “cull” of books resulting in some ten boxes ready for donation. Plus, the room is just a bedroom fitted out with many shelves.
Someday soon I plan to build an extension on the house - for one, the kitchen is far too small and there is no main-floor bathroom. But a major element I plan to add is a big library on the second floor, with built-in wooden shelves going to the ceiling. There will be a skylight in the centre of the room and a comfy reading chair. And yes, a ladder for reaching the top shelves!
Another five years or so for saving cash …
When fianceé and I moved into our new home, I got rid of seven moving boxes full of our communal books! I got no more the 150 dollars for the lot at the used booksellers…
Currently only the living room has three filled bookcases, and one bookcase filled with DVd’s and games. The bathroom has a basket attached to the wall with only the latest magazines in it, and a few bathroom classics, like books with short stories and booklets with visual illusions. His nightstand has usually three issues of computermagazines; my nightstand has about five books.
I prefer library books, as I can return them. They are stacked at their own shelf in the bookcase.
Lately I feel old books bring a stuffy smell to the house. If my nose gets any more sensitive to that smell, I might throw out more books.
One last interesting factoid; i read that one of the few things that statistically correlates to how well kids do in school, was not the educational level of the parents, or how involved they were in the 'kids’schooling, but the number and variety of books in their homes. The researches gave it as an axample of that what parents are is more important then what they do. No explanation for the correlation was given, but the researchers guessed the books were a reflecton of the intellectual attitude of the parents.
No books in the kitchen or dining room. Livingroom has several, but only because I’m lazy about putting them away when I’m done. The bedrooms all have several, but they all belong (when not being read) on the shelves of my library/craft room/sewing room.
(All that stays in the bathrooms is magazines.)
Lessee… We have maybe a hundred books each in the living room, our home office and each of the three bedrooms. None in the dining room, the bathrooms, or the basement (other than long-boxed books there that haven’t seen the light of day in more than six years). And we have a coupla dozen cookbooks in the kitchen. I guess that’s it.