Book it

 I am a book collector.  When pressed, I rationalize the situation thus: when it's books, it's not hoarding.  My feelings about these noble instruments of storing and transmitting human knowledge are too vast to be encapsulated here.  But my feelings are best summed up by no less than Carl Sagan: 

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

Books fill my home.  Many are autographed by their authors, which gives them special meaning to me.  But all have value.  And when I read this recent article, I was fascinated by the statistics.  In it, I learned that while 85% of all American own at least one book, few own as many as I do.  And here, the scientist in me is chagrined by a lack of data.  While I use nifty book inventory software from the Dutch company Collectorz, my book collection is incompletely recorded.  I've been diligent in recording new book purchases for the past decade or so, but older acquisitions have not been fully entered into my database.  So the app says I have 616 books cataloged, but I estimate that's only a little over half of the household library, so I may well be among the 3% in the article who own over 1000 books. Of these, 101 are autographed by the author, according to my records. The article states that older people own more books, and that's certainly the case with me. In my age group, 51% of those, like me, with a postgraduate degree own over 100 books. Of those who own over 100 books, 45% organize their books by genre or subject (instead of by color, size, or author) according to the study.  I would fall into this group, though my organization is not absolute.  Something I really need to work on.  With books, the project is always in progress.

Collectorz: Book Connect