I have 3461 books – that is, 3461 listed on LibraryThing. There are probably more than 3461 books around this place, though, as there is a small number of M’s computer books I couldn’t bear to catalogue at the time (they are so heavy!).
Let me just say, I love LibraryThing. I have been using it for some years now and can’t imagine managing my books without it. How else would I know that I have:
- 3072 books in English
- 255 Chinese
- 99 Malay
- 48 Indonesian
- 16 Dutch
- 14 German
- and 13 in French ?
The most sobering statistic, however, is the number I have actually read, out of these 3461 books. I generated this stat by looking through my books and tagging the ones I know I have read. I then displayed all titles with the Read tag.
The number: 619 read. What’s that, some 18% of the collection? Even allowing for the fact that I may have missed the odd book, this is still a very small number. I know I said I wasn’t going to set myself any reading challenges this year, but it strikes me, that if I concentrate on reading through my collection (even if I am never going to read M’s computer books), I could go for some years without needing to either borrow or buy anything…
10 Comments
LibraryThing must be a blessing with that many books, of course – would assist enormously in their ‘management’. People don’t really realise one has to manage home collections, do they – I hate forgetting I have something (mine are not catalogued, but also nowhere near so many! so I do forget what I have.)
I came across an interesting article recently that argued that it’s only right to have lots of books you haven’t read. When you’re scanning the shelves and the mood hits for a particular book, you can grab it, and devour it immediately. Admittedly, ebooks may well alter than scenario, but for the timebeing at least, it’s a worthwhile outlook. I think I have several hundred I haven’t read but I have read more than half. Afterall 10% of my collection is a mix of Biggles and Enid Blyton and I’ve read those many times apiece.
I have a bunch of books as well on my shelves that I have not read. If I wanted, I could go some significant amount of time without buying or borrowing and still have stuff to read. But then again, you have a book collection not just to have read it all, but for other reasons. As snail points out, being able to grab something when the mood strikes you is a good reason. And I am sure there are other reasons.
Best, and keep on blogging
Hi genevieve, LibraryThing has saved me on a number of occasions from buying a duplicate copy of something!
snail that’s a good point! Oh, and are all your Biggleses and Enid Blytons listed on Librarything? I’ll have to have a stickybeak!
I’ve only got 180 odd books on LT so far. Now that everything is out of boxes I plan to add them all. Will need to declaw my cuecat but will then hook it up to my eee and go from book to book. I think Biggles alone is around 80 titles or so, some are duplicates as I later bought first editions.
Found it! The article was by Ebert and it inspired this well-worth-reading thread on languagehat (the comments are always decent).
Thanks snail, very interesting! (I subscribe to languagehat, how could i have missed the article?)
Angel, how many books do you have? 🙂
Great blog post 🙂 I’ve never looked at the stats section on LibraryThing – interesting indeed. Less than half of my book collection is on LibraryThing so far. The number of books around the house has always seemed innumerable – will be interesting to get a final tally when I’ve finished adding them. And now I finally see a reason for marking whether or not I’ve read a book – I think I might also be surprised at the ratio of read to unread …
I have only part of my book collection on LibraryThing,need to work on adding more. Stats are a good reason. Thanks 🙂