Ask a Literary Lady: How Many Books is Too Many?

Dear Literary Lady,
How many books is too many?
—H.M., San Francisco CA
 
Dear H.M.,
I want to answer your question by saying you can never have too many books, but then I’d be lying. See, if I had my druthers, I’d keep every book I ever read AND amass all the books I want to read. But that would require having a home of palatial proportions, which my abode in Manhattan is decidedly not.
Just as real life gets in the way of reading to your heart’s content, so does real life get in the way of building the biggest book collection ever owned by one person. There comes a time when you must curate your collection and eliminate some of the volumes in your home.
How do you know when that difficult time has come? Just ask yourself the following questions:
1. Have I ever sustained an injury from tripping over stacks of books in my home?
2. Has my bookshelf started to sag, or otherwise appear structurally unsound, due to the sheer weight of all the books it holds?
3. Do I refrain from having visitors in my home because I’m afraid they’ll be aghast at the number of books?
4. Have I stopped using certain household fixtures and appliances in order to store books in them? I.e. the fridge, the oven, the bathtub, the fireplace.
5. Have I not seen my floor in several months due to the proliferating piles of reading material?
6. If one of my precarious stacks of books fell over, would it pose a danger to me?
7. Is getting a book out from underneath a mound on par with a high-stakes game of oversized Jenga?
8. Do I refuse to move to a bigger home (even though it would mean more storage space) because I don’t want to pack my books up in 62 boxes?
9. Do I eat off my lap every night because there are no open, flat surface on which to balance a plate?
10. Do my mountains of books block out natural light from the windows?
11. In times of emergency, is there no means of egress in my home that doesn’t involve climbing over heaps of novels and getting distracted by an old favorite?
12. When I go to the bookstore, do I have trouble finding books that I don’t already own?
13. Have my friends stopped giving me books as gifts because they think I have too many?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you might have too many books. Donate some and share the literary wealth, then treat yourself to a brand new book (or two!)
Love and paperbacks,
Ginni