Four years ago I moved into a flat with one bookshelf and decided not to buy a second. Forty books, give or take the ones lying around. Everything else is borrowed, lent out, or gone.
The rule is about leaving, not arriving
People assume the constraint is about what gets in. It is not — I buy roughly as many books as I ever did. The constraint is that every arrival forces a departure, and the departure is the part that teaches you something.
Holding two books and choosing which one leaves the house is a sharper question than any review. You find out very quickly which ones you kept because you loved them and which ones you kept because of who you were when you bought them.
A shelf with room on it is a wish list. A full shelf is an argument you have already had with yourself.
What survived four years
The composition is not what I would have predicted. I expected the shelf to drift towards reference and ended up with the opposite.
- Reference books went first. Everything in them is a search away, and I was keeping them for the feeling of being someone who owns them.
- Books I argue with outlasted books I agree with, by a wide margin.
- Four have never been at risk: not the best four, but the four I reread, which turns out to be a different list entirely.
The part that does not work
Lending is where the system leaks. A book out on loan is still mine and still takes a slot, so for about two months a year the shelf is quietly over capacity and I pretend not to notice. I have stopped trying to fix this. It is the only part of the rule that exists because of other people, which probably makes it the best part.
I would not recommend forty as a number. I would recommend having one, because the number is not the point — the forced departure is, and any number gives you that.
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