How Many Books is Too Many?

How many Books is Too Many?  I wonder.  I recall a cousin telling me that she had more than 10,000 books in her library - and we worked out if she read 2 per week it would take almost 100 years to read them all - and she was more likely to buy new books along the way.  Mmmm.

Just recently a local community group, of which I am a member held a Book Sale to raise funds as we had little or no funds in the bank.  It was necessary to pay for Public Liability Insurance and other items.

I weaned out a number of books that I no longer wanted and donated them.  My daughter also gave me a box of books as a donation too, but I found a couple of MY books there, one of which was very special to me.  How glad am I that I was able to go through the box first!

Counting mine has never been anything I wanted to do - but I do know that I have too many, so this week I set out to reduce the number and prepare a box of books for the next Book Sale.

Going through the books, one by one, has been interesting.  I found one book that I knew I had, but had forgotten where I had put it - it was at the back of the bookshelf, and I happily grabbed it.  It was a book written by a lady, who self published.  It's quite a long story, but the brief story is this.  The first print run was discarded as there were errors in it - and she was promoting the second run.  When I found it full of errors I contacted her assuming that I had somehow been given a book from the first print run.  She quite rudely assured me that I had the latest copy - which she had spent over $1000 to have an qualified editor edit the work.  I was unimpressed!!!

As it turns out, I often used it in workshops I ran about the importance of getting one's work PROPERLY  edited and proof read!!  I haven't needed it recently, but glad I have it.



I will continue with my cleaning out of my things - and hopefully really reduce the number of books I will keep.  

I've got a lot of paperwork to destroy too!  My house is not looking clean and tidy at the moment.  The work goes on.


Comments