…and counting!!! Jeebus! That’s just my fiction books! I haven’t even gotten started on the film, true crime & bio/autbios! And that’s just the books I want to sell!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:
I’m moving to a new place and even though it’s actually bigger than where I am now, I have decided to consolidate/get rid of “stuff”. I have a small 2nd bedroom with bookshelves around the perimeter of the rooms. I figured I had 500-800 TOTAL, and this just blows my mind!!! They sure take up a lot less space than you’d think; I’ve filled 9 U-Haul “small” boxes with what are mainly paperbacks & trade paperbacks.
The mind truly boggles…how many books do you have?
I’ve never had more than 1000-1200 at one time, mostly hardcovers. Eight bookcases, in three rooms, and piles in odd places. Paperbacks are hard on my eyes, or I’d be able to keep more books around.
When I run out of space, I pull out a couple hundred and list them at Amazon, or trade them.
I’ve heard of people who have 10,000-12,000. :eek: Who has that much room? But what fun that must be – organizing them, browsing, fondling. Sigh.
Given average shelf size and number of books per shelf, I’d estimate the number of books in the house at ~1200. If I start counting the ones in storage, the number triples easily.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get that many. I have a tendency to go through “giveaway” sprees ever few months to clear off my shelves. I get rid of most of the books I know I wouldn’t read again and that I doubt I would ever lend to anyone. Still, my collection is slowly growing, so who knows?
According to my mystery list I have about 4000 mysteries. I have about 3000 non-fictions, some classics, and a couple of shelves of cookbooks.
All arranged by Dewey decimal numbers (you can take the librarian out of the Library but…)
Here is a program I’ve been using. It’s the first one I’ve found that lets you export the data to an Excel spreadsheet. It’s really easy to use, and has lots of neat features.
I know the feeling. I have shelves and shelves. I gave away several hundred a few years back and it is getting close time for me to do another purging.
Mercotan Manor has two libraries, one upstairs and one downstairs. The upstairs one has shelves so high that there’s a rolling ladder to enable us to reach the upper levels. The downstairs one has nine floor to ceiling wooden bookshelves. Both libraries are pretty full. I keep the excess stuffed in cabinets and boxes. The master bedroom contains the active reading library, usually about 40 books/journals/atlases and variants. I think I’ve read at least 85% of the books.
This is a problem how, exactly? Wasn’t it the great Terry Pratchett himself who said something like “If you have enough space for everything on your bookshelves, I don’t want to know you”?
Incidentally, I just finished counting, and I have 182 books in my room. Don’t even get me started on the bookcase outside in the hall, the downstairs table, the storage boxes in the basement…
I use Readerware. The program is inexpensive, feature-packed, and you can’t beat being able to use a bar code reader to get your data into the program.
I also like Library Thing, which tells me that I have 679 books at the moment. There are some that are still at my parent’s house that aren’t in the count.
I really have no idea how many books I have. A quick estimate of this room I’m sitting in is about 800, and there are probably that many again in the schoolroom, and again spread around the rest of the house on various bookshelves. So I’m guessing over 2000, which makes my recent weeding efforts (a pile of 10) look pretty pathetic. It’s hard to weed, because I really try to only buy things I want to own permanently/can’t get at the library.
My recent victory: I just got a mint-condition Encyclopaedia Britannica, including all yearbooks, for $50. Next to my Annals of America and Great Books (both of those are more beat up), it looks pretty spiffy!
