Help for the (Casual) Book Hoarder

Are you a book hoarder? Mark Medley of the National Post is one, and he wants fellow hoarders to share their stories. As he points out in his essay “Confessions of a Book Hoarder,” hoarding is having its moment in the sun, largely thanks to A&E’s unlikely hit “Hoarders.” Medley acknowledges that his “morbid fascination” with the TV show is likely due to his own inability to get rid of a single book. He admits the issue is not the number of books he owns, but rather the fact that he can’t part with any of them. (Medley guesses that he and his girlfriend share a library upwards of one thousand books, a number he considers “rather paltry.”)

A cursory Google search (or just a glance around this office) reveals that Medley is not alone in his book hoarding. Though the perils of book sloppiness has been discussed recently, hoarding is of a different order. In fact, there is a medical condition known as “bibliomania,” which according to Wikipedia is a psychological disorder “characterized by the collecting of books which have no use to the collector nor any great intrinsic value to a genuine book collector. The purchase of multiple copies of the same book and edition and the accumulation of books beyond possible capacity of use or enjoyment are frequent symptoms of bibliomania.”

Well, thanks a lot, Wikipedia. I’ll never look at my four copies of “The Little Prince” the same way again.

Though we may not be diagnosed bibliomaniacs, it sounds like, on a practical level, Medley and I could use a few tips from Nancy Bass-Wyden, a co-owner of the Strand bookstore. Wyden was interviewed recently in the Wall Street Journal about her personal book collection, which is at least double that of Medley’s. She is full of helpful advice for the casual book hoarder. Some highlights include:

  • Allow yourself to display only five hundred books at a time.
  • Organize books first by category, then alphabetically by author’s last name, making it easier for you and your guests to find them.
  • Store your books upright, but if they must be horizontal (like coffee table books) do not pile more than four books.
  • If you add a new book, take an old one out.

With such a healthy library, it’s doubtful we’ll see Wyden on “Hoarders” any time soon. But with only a quarter of her books on display at a time, Wyden’s secret must lie in storage. So who knows—maybe we’ll get a peek at the hidden libraries of America on A&E’s “Storage Wars” instead!

(Image: "Stack of Books," by Indi Samarajiva.)

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