How Many Books Does It Take?

 

How Many Books Does It Take to Make a Place Feel Like Home?

There’s a reason that some people won’t let go of their physical books — and a new term for it: ‘book-wrapt.’

Mr. Byers coined a term — “book-wrapt” — to describe the exhilarating comfort of a well-stocked library. The fusty spelling is no affectation, but an efficient packing of meaning into a tight space (which, when you think of it, also describes many libraries). To be surrounded by books is to be held rapt in an enchanted circle and to experience the rapture of being transported to other worlds.

So how many books does it take to feel book-wrapt? Mr. Byers cited a common belief that 1,000 is the minimum in any self-respecting home library. Then he quickly divided that number in half. Five hundred books ensure that a room “will begin to feel like a library,” he said. And even that number is negotiable. 

“What’s five times 40?” Alice Waters, the chef and food activist, recently asked. (The question was rhetorical.) “Two hundred, 400, 600, 800,” she calculated, apparently scanning the bookcases around her and adding up their contents (she was speaking on the phone). “And then probably another 800,” she said, referring to other rooms in her Berkeley, Calif., bungalow.

“Any large room looks wrong without the appropriate number of people in it,” Mr. Byers writes. “An unused living room looks empty. An empty ballroom is absolutely creepy; it looks as if it is waiting desperately for something to happen. A library, on the other hand, is delightful when full but still especially attractive when empty.”

And masses of books, he said, represent “delights that we hold in possibility” — the joy of being able to lift a hand and tap unexplored worlds. (Because who among us has read every single book in our libraries?) “I like to be in a room where I’ve read half the books, and I’d like there to be enough books that I cannot possibly read them in my remaining years,” he said.

This was a delightful article.  However, it confuses the idea of one's collection of books with a room that supposedly houses that collection.

Most of my rooms have bookcases in them, so I have always wondered how many books I have. They used to be rather well organized, but since I retired about twenty years ago, I have not kept up with the organization. So perhaps this will be the year to get things organized, and in the process to count them. 

Case-Western University has an annual book sale of donated books. They will even come out to your house and pick them up if you have enough books.

Since I like to underline books, I should also be able to count the number of books that I own that I have read.  Of course, over the years I have read a lot of books that I have borrowed from various libraries.