How many books are available via download to my kindle? I can have any one of those on my device in a few seconds. Do I “have” them if I can access them faster than the owner of a physical copy could track that copy down and have it in his hands?
ETA: in case it’s not obvious by this point, yes, I’m high.
I said between 2000 and 3999, but have never really counted or estimated. But all of my many bookshelves are full and books are piled up on other furniture and on the floor. I also have a ton of LPs, DVDs, CDs, and VCR tapes to add to the clutter.
Between library sales, garage sales and BookOff in Manhattan . . . far too many. My eldest is following in my footsteps. We have 25 bookshelves in the house.
I started counting, and was past 500 before getting out of the guest room. Easily over 1000 altogether, but well under 2000.
I’ve built most of my own bookcases, so that they hold a lot of books of a lot of different sizes without a lot of wasted space, and can handle the weight of all those books. The double bookcase I built for the guest room is a thing of beauty - a couple of big lower shelves for oversized volumes, then a deep shelf just a few inches high for atlases that get stored lying flat, then four more shelves of normal depth above that.
But I’m almost as proud of my bookshelves for paperbacks, because they’re no deeper than you need for paperbacks, which means that they can sit against a wall and take away only a few inches of floor space from the room.
Well, a couple thousand of the books are my wife’s. On the other hand she’s at work an awful lot of the time. The possibilities…
It’s a great username, and I can say that because I put no effort into it. I was looking at Harpo Speaks shortly before I joined, thought “that would be cool” and just entered it. People like it. And the best part is that except when I clear my cookies I never have to think about spelling it.
100 to 249, I think. Quite a few are in boxes. I’ve gotten out of the book-buying habit, mostly, due to lack of shelf space and trying to save some bucks. I’m much more likely to get books from the library these days.
I’d estimate that I’ve read about a quarter of these; I PLAN to read another quarter (these are in a specific bookcase, scolding me every time I walk by for doing stuff like Doping); I USE another quarter from time to time (cookbooks, atlases, etc.); and the last quarter were inherited from people like my grandparents – most of these will never be read.