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At the height of my collection about 10 years ago, I probably had around 1,500. Since then I've been slowly paring down and letting go, and now I'm down to 175 (only counting physical books, not ebooks).
I realized that probably sooner than later, I'm going to be downsizing, and I wouldn't be able to lift/carry/move all the books I had. I'm now trying to only keep the ones that really mean something to me or that I believe I want to re-read at some point.
It's been hard to let go at times though - I still have about 3 plastic tubs of ones I culled a few months ago sitting in my garage - I got them off the shelves, but I can't quuiittee take the final step to letting them go just yet!
Wow some very big numbers. I only started reading seriously this year so I haven't accumulated many. Plus most I check out from the library. I probably have 20-30 or so. Some were old childhood favorites I can't let go of.
I once had somewhere between 500 and 750 fiction paperback books, college text books, and assorted technical books. Never unpacked them the last time I moved, lost most of them to a basement flood. I winnowed the surviving books down to only about 20 that were keepers and recycled the rest, mainly out-of-date technical books.
I now have over a hundred books that I've purchased, but in e-book format. Never have to move a large library again. I still get some books, usually the ones I find worth keeping in hard copy, and I now get them in hard-cover rather than paperback. So the dead-tree library is growing again, but only with books worth keeping. No more read-once-and-stick-on-the-shelf books. Now, such content is for my e-reader.
A little over 1,000. I have moved twice in the past decade or so, and each time I unloaded some and in preparation for my demise I have starting getting rid of more just recently.
Can one really have too many books? Other than theoretically?
Oh, thousands, anyway. Every room except the bathrooms & laundry have bookshelves, with books, magazines stacked & piled. I pared my collection before we moved here, Mrs. didn't pare much. So she's still looking @ her collection. Mine's probably down to hundreds, a small core of reference, plus books that I want to read again.
But yah, we hit the library a lot - I keep notes on the ones I want to refer back to. Otherwise, we'd hardly be able to move about in the house. So - unless it's something I really truly want a copy of - it's mostly library books. But we still look @ the shelves @ thirft stores, garage sales, library book sales, used book sales, & etc.
150ish we just bought a house and got rid of some because we thought we were going to end up in a smaller home. Now that we have a 2 bedroom we plan to make that room a library/guest room so more to come.
I've never counted - not sure I want to know. Three large bookshelves and 4 small ones? Not including the ones I've loaned out over the years and never got back and the couple hundred I unloaded at the flea market in my 20s.
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Many of them more than once.
Can one really have too many books? Other than theoretically?
