Andrew Mina

Do you need to have 1,000 books to have a home library?

I’ve come across the claim a few times that you need 1,000 books to ‘officially’ have a home library. I’m not convinced.

I would suggest having a 1,000 plus books takes considerable intentionality, organisation, money and space!

Library vs Collection

When it comes to a home, I avoid defining the books there as a library, I see it as a collection.

So what is a library? According to Merriam-Webster a library is:

a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (such as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale.

Going further, I think a library implies some intentional system for recording, managing and providing access to its contents.

I would prefer to refer to the books in a home as a collection. These are the books you have chosen to live with and are allowing to continue to ‘speak’ to you. They are part of a personal collection.

After two significant book purges in 2007 and 2012 (both connected to moving), our collection has grown to around 800 books. When we moved to Denmark books filled most of the boxes.

Side note, most of the books purged were donated the Alphacrucis University College library.

The charge against me

The charge: Owning books I haven’t read.
The evidence: Read roughly 35% of them.
Verdict: Not Guilty

In fact there are several reasons owning unread books is nothing to feel guilty about.

Firstly, ours is a family collection from my wife, the kids, and myself and to be fair are many reference titles, too.

Having read roughly 35% of them, am I okay with this? No, I want to read more of them and I am working on it. And having not read 65% isn’t failure.

Unread books aren’t necessarily a problem

But here is the thing… I get so inspired by conversations, recommendations, sales, second-hand books shopping, and free books that there probably always going to be more books on the shelves that I haven’t read than I have read.

Owning an unread book isn’t necessarily a failure to read it; it is an expression of curiosity.

I believe that you should think about an unread book in your collection not necessarily unfinished business. But as potential, waiting for the spine to be cracked at the right time.

Another way to think about unread books in your collection isn’t ask “Why haven’t I read this book?” but “Do I still want this book to be part of my collection?”

The problem is discovering more books

I believe there is actually a right time to read a book. Well, unless you’re in a book club and then the right time is this month.

There are books that you:

• discover in your twenties but aren’t ready for until your in forties
  • Brief Lives by Anita Brookner
    
• buy because someone warmly recommends them
  • A Dictionary of Color Combinations
    
• partially read because you’re studying something
  • Organisational Theory by Stephen Robbins and Neil Barnwell
    
• keep because they mattered at a particular point in your life
  • Architecture of Happiness by Allan de Botton
    
• haven’t read because another book became more important
  • Start with Why by Simon Sinek
    
• may never read
  • Let Them by Mel Robbins
    

To be honest, this year I have tried to be more diligent to read from our collection or borrowing from the local library. I won’t say I have a book-buy ban in place, as there has been some purchases, but I have been more conscious about reading what we have first.

The jury has acquitted me, but unfortunately the world keeps producing books. Unfortunately, the case against my future book acquisitions is still open.

Temptation

But here’s the thing. I love a good recommendation and there are so many great sources of inspiration for what to read next. Beyond personal recommendations, bookshop staff, librarians and apps such as Spines, there are plenty of other sources of inspiration:

Media outlets: my favourite are the Financial Times books and The Guardian Books, but I would also suggest The New Yorker Books and The New York Times Book Review.

Social Media: BookTok, BookTube and Bookstagram are enormous sources of reading recommendations. I mention them here mainly because I know they exist; I don’t actually use them myself.

Reading platforms: Fable, Goodreads, Margins and my preferred StoryGraph.

My rap sheet is getting longer

With all this input it can be hard to keep track of books you want to read and sooner or later you might start to see the term ‘TBR’ being floating around.

TBR stands for ‘To Be Read’ and is essentially, the list of books you want to read and don’t want to forget about. It includes books you already own, intend to purchase, or borrow.

Your TBR needs to be stored somewhere. I keep my TBR lists in my notes app on my phone, the Bibliotek app, and on my StoryGraph profile. This is especially helpful when holidays are coming up as I know there is a solid list to consider.

Do you need a 1,000 book library or a collection?

So, do you need 1,000 books to have a home library? I still don’t think so.

And do you need to have read every book you own? Definitely not.

For me, it is about a collection is made up of books that have earned their place in our home and that includes books we’ve read, books we’re yet to read, books we return to, books that remind us of a particular season of life and books that might just be waiting for the right moment.

The real question isn’t “Have I read this?” It’s “Do I still want this book to be part of my collection?”

Verdict: Not guilty.

Although I may need to have a word with my TBR.