Asking this out of curiosity. My goal next year is to start reading more, I used to read all the time and I miss it!
I have a coworker who used to teach history to high school students for 25 years and was also a college professor. He has a personal library of over 12,000 books (takes up two rooms in his house)! He said most of them are about theology.
So, how big is your personal library and what genre takes up the majority of it?
Me too, with a side of Horror.
I have a bit over 1,000 items in my library. Of these, there are:
-- 141 books on Religion and Theology (LCC BL-BX)
-- 226 books on History and related subjects (categories C-F)
-- 35 books on Geography, Recreation, etc. (LCC class G)
-- 51 books on Social & Political Sciences, Law, and Education (classes H-L)
-- 172 items related to Music, including scores and collections of songs (class M)
-- 282 books of Fiction & Poetry (most of class P along with general bibliography from Z)
-- 92 books on the various Sciences (classes Q-Z)
There are a few other general items as well, such as in Ethics, Philosophy, and Psychology.
We have around 3000, but I wouldn't say any one category dominates. My wife reads mostly fiction and I read almost entirely non-fiction. I have a lot of graphic design, art, photography and music books that definitely take up the most room as they're physically big.
I prefer non-fiction over fiction for sure, but have recently been sucked into a fictional mystery series. Just waiting on the author to release more books!
I've found that I go through phases. I turfed out a good 100 books of early stuff I read over 10 years ago because my new fascination had kicked in and I was stacking books in uncomfortable piles in the hallway. Plus I knew Id' never read them again.
I can't do that with non-fiction.
What’s the series?
The Dr. Jessie Teska series written by Judy Melinek, MD and TJ Mitchell.
Only two books so far in the series, they also have written a memoir together (they're married) and she is a forensic pathologist/medical examiner in real life which is what her books are about.
Rad, thanks. I’ll check them out.
Their first book (the memoir) is titled "Working Stiff" and it is my favorite book. Nothing I read in the future will ever be able to top that book in my opinion. We'll see...
500ish books and its probably mostly horror.
Ohhh interesting. What's a good place to start for someone who's never read a horror book?
I think it just depends on what you already like, but Stephen King, while hit or miss for me, is a pretty accessible place to start. Other than that if you like more serious literary fiction I would recommend any of Shirley Jackson’s books or Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Both are gothic fiction so they’re going to be more atmospheric than anything else. I saw you replied to someone’s else you like nonfiction so Carmen Maria Machado’s In The Dream House, which uses the haunted house framework to tell the story of an abusive same sex relationship the author was in, might be interesting. And if nothing else, pick up some goosebumps or point horror. They’re teen horror and a bit campy, but still fun and where a lot of us started.
Horror is by far my most collected fictional genre (all hardcovers for me, though I’m the only person in my friend group that enjoys them). I admit 1/4 of that is probably King and Rice (I think I have about 80 between them currently). Do you have any particularly favorite authors?
I haven't counted in a while, a couple of hundred I think. Mostly fantasy. 😁 I got new bookshelves at the start of the year and I'm taking my time filling them up.
About 300, and I think Romance by a long shot.
Mostly Stephen King (I have around half of his books, which doesn't sound like much until you realize he has like, 70 books).
I started to buy books 6 months ago, so far i have mostly classic literature and philosophy. Im 18 and i try to read more for my own sake got stuff like Dostoievsky, Kafka, romanian books for school (about 20 books), Nietzsche, Nikolai Gogol, Huxley, Orwell, got some books about the brain. I got about 40 books yet, and there are way more to come.
Planning on getting Kant, Plato, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Kirkegaard, Goethe, Schiller, Camus, Proust, Flaubert and many, many others. I got a booklist and its pretty big, it would be a dream come true to read, understand and use all of that. Im passionate to learn about history and philosophy and stuff like that. I'll be back in a year and we'll se how big it got
Neighborhood if 4,000 books. The biggest genres are sci-fi/fantasy, history, biographies, and general literature taking up 90% of the total about evenly split between them. The biggest category with the remaining 20% is cookbooks, with about 150.
Wow! Have you read them all??
There's about 150 in my "to be read" stack. There's about 1,300 or so that are my girlfriend's that I haven't read as well. Between the two of us, about 200 total unread.
Interesting!
Like 300 books in my tiny room and it keeps growing. It's out of control lol! Economics, anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy of science, genetics sociology, 99.9% non-fiction
Love it.
Currently 4,397. All genres between my wife and I.
Around 1200 titles, I suppose the majority would just be classed as realistic/contemporary fiction? Within that it's a fairly even mix of books for adults, YA and children's books. A chunk of it is also vintage children's books (40-60s), most of which feature horses, dogs or wildlife.
Depends. My paper library is mostly my favorite fiction, and a few nonfiction reference books. My ebook library is mostly occultism resources and nonfiction - those are generally the books that I can't afford a paper copy of, or only need three pages from at a time. Lots and lots of old knitting and sewing manuals, too.
One of the beautiful things about ebooks is that they don't fill up shelves. I've got well over 500 ebooks on my phone, mostly fantasy or sci-fi.
I'm not a fan of ebooks. I prefer the physical book. I also like to see the books I've been sucked into in the past on the shelf. Memories!
Nonetheless, to each his/her own. Not everyone has alot of space in their house or apartment. I'm not even allowed to have a personal library due to the weight. Lol
Both are inherently good, but they have their advantages and disadvantages. There are also some benefits to having some cherished and beautiful physical books, but also a large ebook collection.
Very true.
I agree with the wanting to see the books I've read on a shelf aspect, but again, I can't afford every book I want to read in physical copy.
This year, I started making little miniatures of the books I've read that will go into a jar for each year, so I can still have that visual representation even of the ebooks!
Oh what!? That's awesome. Can you make a post and take a pic of the miniature books? I'd like to see.
I have around 150 "books" now that I donated most of my collection to the library. Cookbooks are now a vast majority, before it was fantasy/ sci-fi.
Probably a thousand books (nine sets of shelves plus more in storage area), SF, fantasy, mystery then a mix of genres. Another six hundred or so e-books between two Kindles and my Kobo reader. My whole life has always been about having reading material close to hand, it would seem.
I thought I had a lot of books, but when I finally did a spreadsheet of the titles, I only came up with just over 500 (which seems small to me).
Anyway, vast majority fall into sci-fi / fantasy, with Star Trek books making up about 60, Mercedes Lackey books bringing in another 20 or so, and ditto for Robin Hobb and Anne McCafferty.
Shoot, I have maybe 10 books. Not allowed to have a library in my apartment due to the weight. Thankfully I live next to a public library.
That's awesome you live that close!
Remember though, my "collection" has been accumulated over 40 years and I've never had to worry about weight issues except when moving.
Yay for living so close to a library!
I have a four shelf book case from target. Top two are all books I've read. Third is books I want to read or read partly and dident like. The bottom is old textbooks I just can't bring myself to throw away. Horror/buisiness books are my biggest two. Fantasy and classics are next in that order. I have about another shelf or two read on a kindle
We have several thousand--I have no idea. Hubby thinks it's 10K, but I don't think it's that many, but he does have many small military books that are like 60 pages each devoted to uniforms, or planes, or other military subjects--there could be 10K. He mostly has SF and nonfic military. I think I have mostly mystery and US/European history. We also have space books, animal books, nearly one Ikea "Billy" filled with biographies (two shelves of travel at the bottom), linguistic books, two bookcases just full of children's books, a bookcase and a half of just Christmas books, a bookcase full of bound issues of "St. Nicholas" magazines, etc.
Maybe 8-10,000. Music would be the largest single category, then books relating to Scotland, mathematics/logic, philosophy, other sciences, computing, the Middle East and (more than 50%) you-name-it.
My wife has about 1,000 books on food.
It’s not big anymore as I had to get rid of most of my books. But romance makes up the majority.
Scifi, fantasy, mythology, art and history makes up the majority of it. Maybe a few hundred these days.
A while back I made the decision to read everything I'd only read once on paperback. And everything I re-read periodically I collect in very nice cloth or leather bound editions. Stuff like this. I'd just started packing the 'library' here.
I got four doors worth of shelves like that and any time it's full, I take a look at what I'll get rid of to make space for something new. Usually it's the art books that get it as they're the least read and most replaceable. With some exceptions.
About 600 books - I only keep them if I have a reason to, for example if I think I’ll re-read or reference them, or they have huge sentimental value like some books from my childhood. I used to have about four times that many, but I realised I had no reason to hang onto them and they were taking up a lot of room in my home. Speculative fiction (sci-fi/fantasy) is about half of that, with other fiction and non-fiction making up the rest.
Sci-Fi and horror on my side, mystery/thriller on my wife's side.
Fiction
I’ve not done a count, but my collection currently takes up 4 storage tubs in my garage (my current apartment is hideously small), two bookshelves, the entirety of under my bed, 2 floating wall shelves, and in miscellaneous stacks around my home.
A majority is classic literature and pure slutty smutty fantasy.
I try to get books through the library/Libby, so I have around 20 books. The books I have are mostly thriller/mystery or fantasy.
Sci-fi for me. 214 megabytes. Takes up very little (physical) space
It's as big as my kindle
I probably have about 100 or so books on there. Mostly unread.
12,000! Wow!
My personal library is around 1300 books, and the majority of it is fiction — specifically thrillers and romance!
Around 400,000 e-books, but some titles are repeating, and maybe 500 or so physical tomes of classic literature, history, arts, philosophy and natural sciences.
I have over 1,100 physical books (way more ebooks, over 4,400, and 300 something audiobooks but those take up no more space than my tablet lol). I have them all logged onto multiple Goodreads shelves, started doing it when I became an avid reader in 2015.
And, mine are mix of genres. Horror might be the biggest but it's not like, a giant compared to other genres. I love a little bit of everything at least. I got horror, nonfiction (nature, animals, autobiographies, memoirs, biographies, social justice related things, disability justice, queer studies, anti-racism, history, paranormal, religion, psychology, Science, and other random topics here and there), classics, manga, comics, graphic novels, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, thrillers, contemporary, literary, romance ...
Yes I did just look at my bookshelves lol.
And each "area" looks ... fairly equal. Ish. An interesting mix at least. Horror and nonfiction (all subgenres combined) are definitely the largest.
Around 2200 books, rough estimate, mostly juvenile fiction, vintage picture books, vintage dog/horse books.
I worked in the youth/teen sections of a public library for years and most of my collection is from then when I used to do readers advisory and add a lot of my own books to the library collection.
I went back to school and quit library work and now I'm sort of at an impasse with my collection.
I still very much love juvenile fiction. Like, my spouse bought me Elephant and Piggie books for Christmas because I adore a good picture book.
My kid is 12 now and was never into kids books- she was reading teen fiction years ago.
>mostly juvenile fiction, vintage picture books, vintage dog/horse books.
We are now best friends.
Lol, are you also a hoarder of the Grosset Dunlap famous dog/ horse stories?
I do have a few floating around here! I don't run across them that often but I know I've picked up The Sorrel Stallion (who is clearly bay or buckskin on this dust jacket, what is happening) and Cinchfoot: The Story of a Range Horse in recent months. Haven't read them yet though. (edit: oh! and Bluegrass Champion, which I definitely have; I love Dorothy Lyons)
I run into them rarely. I don't have that many yet because I've sort of been making myself find them in person. At some point I may just cave and buy them online.
I haven't read all of mine either, some of them the bindings are pretty weak where I feel like even a single read through will be the end of them.
I have about 50 physical books (and my bookcase is overflowing with just that!) and many more ebooks, as I have limited space unfortunately. Definitely the majority of them are fantasy or fiction, but I also have a lot of ecology and conservation books.
A little over 4000 books. The majority is a variety of non-fiction
I love non-fiction.
We are in the middle of a renovation (16 months and counting), so not sure how big our library is lol. We have a lot of medical textbooks (my schooling), which is why my fun reading is mostly fantasy,or historical fiction. My husband has contributed fantasy, cookbooks and homesteading books.
I also amended trying to get back into reading, instead of being on my phone. My goal is 30 minutes minimum a day. So far so good
Very cool. Are you a doctor/nurse?
Physical/sports therapy
I’m going to say around 50, excluding ones that are just gorgeous but that I’d have to learn a new language to read (which I’m either planning on or currently working towards, depending on the book).
My biggest genres are realistic fiction and Arthurian mythology, though the biography section is growing.
My kindle library says I have 966 books. History, mystery, science, scifi, politics and fantasy.
I have roughly 586 books. Both ones I’ve read and ones I haven’t gotten to yet. A majority of them are horror, but I have a good mix of other genres too.
About 700, mostly sci-fi/fantasy and technical books.
I've got maybe 600 and it's mostly adult fantasy and historical fiction.
I used to have over 1000 but I've been slowly getting rid of them in chunks of 50 at a time over the last few years (books I bought 10-15 years ago and never read or old YA I feel I've outgrown). I used to think I had to keep every book even if I hated it. I clean out the shelves every other year or so.
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Around 50 physical books so far, a collection of only my favourites that I started maybe a year ago. The vast majority of my reading is from borrowing books or buying cheaper ebooks, and if I love it then I’ll by the physical copy for myself. I have mostly fantasy.
500, classic lit though we have a fair amount of business
I have a 250-300 limit set for myself and the rest goes to donation/gift. mystery/thriller, sci-fi, horror, YA contemporary, a bit of everything honestly except non-fiction which belongs in my kindle.
Probably around 500, mostly non-fiction. Dictionaries, cooking and baking books etc.
I usually loan fiction books from the actual library.
Fiction and it's a couple thousand books
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Around 800 books (mostly mine but some are my husbands). Non-fiction takes up around a third of it, mainly historical accounts with a focus on the 19th to early 20th century. For fiction it's mostly classics with a focus on european literature.
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3 full size book cases of hardbacks, count unknown, but definitely in the hundreds. Mostly fiction and military sci-fi, but some non-fiction. Entire 6 volume set on WWII by Churchill, for instance.
Lots of paperbacks, enough to fill 2 or more full size floor to ceiling book shelves. Again, mostly fiction and sci-fi, but some of it is old, like the Robotech books, and lots of Star Trek books.
More than 160 on Kindle, plus 190 I have from Baen's free library. I intend to get hard copies of as much of my kindle library as I can, as Amazon can't erase a book out of your library if it is on a shelf in your house. ;)
I started reading Hardy Boys and Tom Swift in 5th grade, and have been a reader ever since.
By my count 830, just over 50% unread. That includes kindle (but thats a small amount) and I count a book that contains multiple full stories, like a set of 3 Agatha Christie novels in one book, I would count that as 3 separate books.
The vast majority of it is non-fiction history. Biggest category within that being the First World War at 130ish books (including some fiction) taking up 4 and a half big shelves (probably a full 5 shelves by the end of next year). Other big categories are British history, Russian history, German history, random history where I don't have enough on a topic to justify having a seperate section, Second World War (probably my worst in terms of read vs unread, lots of cheap WWII books in British charity shops) plus some other small categeories.
Fiction wise its a mix of old fashioned murder mysteries, seperate section for Agatha Christie, historical fiction, and a small amount of fantasy and sci-fi (but a big Discworld / Terry Pratchett pile seperatly)
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I purged my library of 2,000 books a few years ago and switched to eBooks. My Kindle has ~ 200 books. Over the last 3 years, I also read a lot of library eBooks. I hadn’t used a library in 40+ years. I always bought books.
About 300-400 - I lost count a while ago.
I've actually slowed down on buying books lately just so I can save money to build some built-ins in my dining room. Once I do, I should be able to stretch my books out so they're not piled 2-deep on the shelves, with a little room to spare.
My collection is ~1,200 books, after thinning the herd when we moved last year. It’s mostly nonfiction, dominated by history and travel narratives.
I don't know how many books I own but it's mostly Fantasy. And also a mixture oft german and englisch books.
It's not too big, but there're lots of detective books and classical literature of any genres
A couple thousand books, I think. Almost all genres are represented other than romance. I have plenty of sci fi, fantasy, urban fantasy, thriller, horror, mystery, action adventure, literature fiction, art books, how-to books for a variety of things, world religions, psychology, layperson science, classics, books turned into movies I like, reference books for painting, and others. I am fortunate enough to have a room dedicated to being a library!
Majority is Fantasy.
I just started reading this year so mine is a lot smaller than most peoples but I currently have 83 books. According to StoryGraph my top genre is romance followed by fantasy, thrillers and mysteries. 57% of them are unread and out of the ones I have read my average rating is 4.45 stars (only keep books that I’ve enjoyed)
1000 paper books, 15,000 ebooks
Sci-fi and fantasy and kids books and old classics are the majority
Few hundred books, I'm not sure exactly. The biggest category is science/nature, but I've got a decent sized collection of genre fiction (mystery, fantasy) and some "classics" that I probably won't reread but like to keep handy.
About 1200 books. Biggest subgroup is non-genre fiction. There's also a lot of history, and a lot of crime/thriller.
occult and comics/graphic novels
Probably about 1500 and it's mostly classics. I upped my Jane Austen game this year and have about 100 titles in my Austen collection alone
Sci fi, fantasy, and horror is my primary, though I also have a big collection of classics and lit fic.
I have downsized in years, ran upwards of 2000. Now probably at 500, rock and roll bios, sports, detective( McDonald, Leonard, and Ferrigno) with a smattering of King, Fitzgerald, and Crichton
Roughly 3500 volumes. Lots of Victorian British lit. and criticism of same. Lots of US history, particularly Appalachia (all eras) and 19th-century Western frontier. A bookcase full of psychology and related topics. More than a few thrillers. And a small but growing non-English language collection, mostly Scottish Gaelic and Swedish (some French, German, and Icelandic, but I'm slow af reading those languages).
I downsized by half when I moved and then did the same again when I moved again. Some of what I got rid of was useless to me, but I regret a lot of it. So... knowing I'll never mass-downsize again, I'm more selective in what I buy, which has slowed the growth of my library. Just the same, given the average lifespan, I'm looking at over 10,000 before I die. My library is actually part of my death planning because I don't want my kids to be stuck dealing with it, lol.
You know those Ikea cube bookshelves? Four of them. Each shelf double layered and with books tucked on top! Horror and fantasy are in the majority
Philosophy, but I'm working on classic literature.
I have 841 books and out of that number 570 of them are manga. Now that's made up of mostly Shounen and Shojo. Out of my other bookshelf I have 271 books that are mostly fantasy, but I have a good bit of horror/true crime mixed in.
What is manga exactly? Are there different genres of manga?
So manga is basically Japanese comic books and they get adapted into TV shows a lot. There are a bunch of different genres too, like the ones I mentioned. Shounen is like action/adventure and Shojo is kinda like romance.
Do they have horror manga? Lol
Absolutely, I've got a couple on my shelf. If you wanted to check it out I'd recommend some works by Junji Ito, he has some very unsettling pieces.
Hmm. I'll look into it. Thank you!
You're welcome!
I have about 150 physically because I don't like owning things and get most of my books at the library. I would say it's mostly nonfiction or fantasy but I have a wide variety
I don't have a big physical library, for three reasons:
As far as genre, I'm pretty eclectic. I like a bit of everything. I might even like romance novels if I ever read one. :) But I don't read non-fiction books, because they're boring to me.
I don’t care about how many books I have, I think about how many I read. That’s the point of books. I don’t like to pay a lot for books that will sit on a shelf. I buy inexpensive ebooks or audiobooks but I get most of my books from the library. I have access to 2 great library systems. Why do I need books laying around not giving enjoyment to others. I own about 50 books from going back to junior high. They have special memories but other books I owned I have given away and I don’t have much space.
I am very similar. If my local library/libby does not have a book I want to read, I put it on a list and hope I get it for my birthday lol.
enderverse87 t1_j21ex87 wrote
Sci-fi/Fantasy is by far the majority.