How much of your library remains unread?

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Most of what I still own I've read for school, but my unread pile is about 10% strong I'm guesstimating. I should note that my library is only about 50 books, though.

― Leee Smith (Leee), Monday, 5 January 2004 23:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Yikes, about 50%

― pete s, Monday, 5 January 2004 23:29 (twenty-two years ago)

mine is proably 40% unread. Guesstimating? ack ack ack!

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 5 January 2004 23:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I think we should liaise in order to come to some sort of a synergy.

― Leee Smith (Leee), Monday, 5 January 2004 23:54 (twenty-two years ago)

To be proactive about things.

― Leee Smith (Leee), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Heh I feel better for you slackers.

Taking the 2 shelves nearest to me - not counting books that my wife owns - 26 read, 17 unread, which is about 40% too I think. I'm counting "read" to include books I gave up as bad and non-fiction books I only got for specific sections. I'm counting "unfinished" as "unread".

Most of my unread ones on those shelves are weighty classics - War And Peace and Our Mutual Friend for instance. The book I feel guiltiest about having on the shelf unread is Mason & Dixon.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 00:29 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, lots and lots. it used to make me feel kinda desperate until i realized that i just liked having a lot of books around at all times and that i had a lot to look forward to.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 00:40 (twenty-two years ago)

moan... this question is making me want to walk out of my job, cudditout! I have a million books going right now and I want to cram all of them inside me...

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 00:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Lots, but mostly books I bought for 50 cents or less.

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 05:18 (twenty-two years ago)

cut college to sit here going thru my 'books' website.
now confronted with this question- guilt assail me.
about say 30-40%? nearly all the 'new' books i buy whenever
i hit second-hand bookstores and those 'classics-all time literature
greats' i have on my bookshelf.

― unfazed, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 07:09 (twenty-two years ago)

at a glance.. from 6 overflowing shelves, left unred are 3 d.h lawrence, 1 hawthorne, to the lighthouse and mrs dalloway, one conrad and 6 other assorted penguin classics... i need to stop buying these

― cheesoo, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 09:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I haven't any totally unread books, because I usually have a nibble at them before giving up. It's rare that I give up on a book only to realise later that it was a great book after all, but I once put down Bleak House after about two hundred dreadful pages and picked it up eight years later and was gripped to the end.

― R the V (Jake Proudlock), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

It's worse than I thought, about 31 novels, 4 unread/unfinished. I'm not counting leftover anthologies/collections and criticism.

― Leee Smith (Leee), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 18:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmmm, thinking on it, probably around 15% or so... I feel less overwhelmed now after reading those around 40-50%!

― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 22:05 (twenty-two years ago)

mine is fairy high because i have been buying new books at about the same rate as i always have but have read much less due to internet access at home and not worjing an hour and a half away from my house (i read about 2 books per week on public transport).

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 22:17 (twenty-two years ago)

(how come i don't ever see you in book shops then? or, what book shops do you shop at, colin?)

― cozen¡ (Cozen), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 23:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh my, somewhere in the 50-60% range. I, too, have the lamentable habit of buying & borrowing books at an alarming rate.

― Susan Prokopeak (sallying), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 23:33 (twenty-two years ago)

haha - how come i never see you out? do you never leave the house?

the usual ones.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 23:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, about a third of it is unread. Then there is the stuff in progress (Infinite Jest, the new translation of "The Idiot"...).
Of course the stuff in progress is part of the stack that I read
at home. There is also the pile of stuff that I read on the train
going to work, sitting alone eating, or standing in line.

― Steve Walker (Quietman), Saturday, 10 January 2004 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Er...let's see, about 450 books total, with about 20 in my TBR list, giving us an unread percentage of 4%. Not bad!

― Joseph J. Finn, Monday, 12 January 2004 19:11 (twenty-two years ago)

i've said it before, usually to the folk stumbling through the piles of books in my small apartment: "no, i haven't read all of them! why would i want a library full of books i've already read?"

― jam, Monday, 12 January 2004 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

i just liked having a lot of books around at all times and that i had a lot to look forward to

i always say, you never know when you'll break both legs. (i think i'm at about 75% but i have lots of anthologies and collections and books meant to be read piecemeal anyway)

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 January 2004 22:50 (twenty-two years ago)

About 30% remains unread, but my library also increases by about the same amount every year, so I've achieved a kind of stasis.

― August C. Bourre (August), Monday, 12 January 2004 22:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Until I threw Delillo's bloated 'Underworld' in the bin it was something like 183% of total page mass. But now, thanks to that, and thanks to the recent holiday where I was able to read a book every two days, it's down to a much more manageable 10%, or just under fifty or so books.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Monday, 12 January 2004 23:25 (twenty-two years ago)

three weeks pass...

Four and a half bookcases, five shelves each, double-stacked.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 5 February 2004 12:04 (twenty-two years ago)

MsLaura: Those are the ones you *haven't* read?

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Thursday, 5 February 2004 21:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Er, yeah, writingstatic - those are the one's I've not yet read - I have a serious book-buying habit. Quite serious. (We've 25 bookcases in the house, at current count - and boxes of books in the garage, too.)

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 6 February 2004 03:13 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Pah!
75% maybe?
It's rather odd to look at my shelves/stacks and have such a large number of unread books, but there's a certain comfort in the ghastly materialism of it. The main reason is that I've always feared that I'll soon end up living in a town where there's no [good] library, so I should use the good ones here as much as possible while I still can.
Most of my personal library* consists of things I've gotten for free though. Seems like it's nigh impossible to go anywhere without seeing people throwing shelves upon shelves worth of books out for anyone to pillage.

*Oh but I'm a pompous pest.

― Øystein (Øystein), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 11:14 (twenty years ago)

I don't think I have any unread books, apart from some from the library. Unless I include Matt's books too.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 11:21 (twenty years ago)

I've about 600 books, about 80 unread. Its been +/- 20 about the same for a few years now, but as a percentage of the total its constantly dropping.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 13:55 (twenty years ago)

I think it's around 25-30%, although as others have implied, the definition of "read" is mutable.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 15:33 (twenty years ago)

Especially the poetry section (which is right next to the computer). Skipping the journals:

Read thoroughly: 86 (48%)
Read decent amounts of: 26 (15%)
Read just a little: 42 (23%)
Totally or practically unread: 25 (14%)

So that's 179 books, of which 63% are "read" and 37% are "unread" -- and I suspect the rest of my collection leans more towards the "read". (Thank you, books filled with comics!)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 15:48 (twenty years ago)

i don't even know how many books i have - maybe about five hundred at the moment, to overestimate probably? - but this thread has left me curious about how many, precisely, i've read. at first guess i would put myself in vahid and oystein's ballpark, and sadly mine have not come cheap. but i have been foiling in advance any attempts to play a game like this; since before i started grad school i've bought very little fiction and too much philosophy 'just to have it'. great: so i've read 'being and time'. why did i need the other AT LEAST SEVEN (oh crap) books of heidegger's that i haven't read? still 'to read later', sigh. etc. etc.

(i think the best explanation is that i picked up my book-buying habit at roughly the same time that i found it difficult to read anything for more than a chapter or two.)

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 06:44 (twenty years ago)

Probably 20% completely unread, another 20% partially read (some of them are books that don't really need to be fully read).

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 13:11 (twenty years ago)

The problem with having a somewhat narrow interest (and I imagine your interest is more specific than just "philosophy", just like mine is more specific than just "poetry") is that you feel like you can get "all the books" and that they are worth having around. And especially if the books are hard to find (or hard to find cheap), how can you pass it up?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:14 (twenty years ago)

huh, i DO feel like that kinda

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:56 (twenty years ago)

Just don't end up with too many such interests and you'll be fine.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

"I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are hot yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates ..."

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 20:18 (twenty years ago)

My main problem is that I feel like my library is outdated. I don't buy that many books (not enough room, gf would kill me, and I get frustrated when I buy more books than I can read), and a lot of the stuff on my shelves is what I liked in college. I don't really need to have, like, everything that Kafka ever wrote, or five Paul Auster books anymore.

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 19 May 2005 03:16 (twenty years ago)

At last count I was around 750 books (mostly received through work; don't be thinkin I'm rich or nuthin, although I do spend my fair share), and probably at least 75% of those are unread (some of that 75% are partially read). I did a clean-out recently, and my neighbors will be happy to pick through unread freebies such as A User's Guide to the Brain, some Louis de Bernieres, and one of my extra copies of Alice in Wonderland.

― zan, Thursday, 19 May 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)

Hurting, I'd like to introduce you to the "Sell Your Stuff" button at Amazon.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 19 May 2005 15:53 (twenty years ago)

Yes, it's going to have to come to that sooner or later.

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 19 May 2005 21:19 (twenty years ago)

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