Grr, I know! We took down several bookcases before putting our house on the market and stored the boxes of books in our loft/with my parents, and still one of the most common comments we got was "gosh, you have an awful lot of books!" The packing-and-removals guys were a bit taken-aback too.
Of course, now we're in a significantly larger house we *still* don't have enough places to put bookcases, and have several boxes of books still to place. I don't know how that happened. I think books must be like a gas.
I was actually surprised by Themis' comment about having read all the books in the house by age 12. My immediate response was that the house couldn't have had enough books, then! I certainly haven't read all the books in our house by a long way - it's only just occurred to me now that possibly this is odd, to want the house to be a bit more like a library (of the old-fashioned private variety more than the modern public type perhaps) containing not just the books one *does* want to read, but all the books one *conceivably might* want to read. Hmmn, perhaps I should approach Skordh's attempts to cut down some of our Stuff - including books, sob - with this new perspective.
Re: Reading
Of course, now we're in a significantly larger house we *still* don't have enough places to put bookcases, and have several boxes of books still to place. I don't know how that happened. I think books must be like a gas.
I was actually surprised by Themis' comment about having read all the books in the house by age 12. My immediate response was that the house couldn't have had enough books, then! I certainly haven't read all the books in our house by a long way - it's only just occurred to me now that possibly this is odd, to want the house to be a bit more like a library (of the old-fashioned private variety more than the modern public type perhaps) containing not just the books one *does* want to read, but all the books one *conceivably might* want to read. Hmmn, perhaps I should approach Skordh's attempts to cut down some of our Stuff - including books, sob - with this new perspective.