So on tiktok there's been a viral sound saying "on average most people have around 15 books in their house". So, lemmy, how many books do YOU have in your house? Is that sound true?

I specifically try to keep the number of physical books I own to a minimum, mainly by borrowing and giving away/selling them. I also moved some two years ago, that’s alway a push to “diet” more.

This being said, I still have way too many books. I’d guesstimate some 120 leisure books (read some 80-90) and some 20 work books (read/studied all of them). Some 50 virtual ones, read all but two I’m currently reading.

Physical: Somewhere beyond 10k. There is the living room with 50m of shelving for novels, etc. There is the studio with the professional books of my wife and me, and there is a large amount of books stored in cardboard boxes in the attic and the basement. And yes, apart from my wifes' professional books, I've read them. Including the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Digital: My digital library has close to 15k books at the moment.

Completely off-topic, but I hate that we use averages for everything. Mode or median would be better for this because then you have a better picture of how many books people generally get - people like y’all with 100+ books throw off that average just as badly as people like me who have like, 3 books lol.

I feel like it's likely 2% of people with 600 books each, and 98% of people having 3.

For me the answer that I need to clean my apartment. I have 8 on the kitchen island, 3 on the couch, ~80 on the shelf, ~80 more in the big drawers, and 7 in a big stack in the bedroom. And, I just discovered, 2 on the floor.

62, I just counted. For someone in a tiny flat, who had one rucksack of possessions to their name when they moved in, I think that's pretty good.

I used to have several Billy bookcases full but homelessness is a bitch.

Tiktok is unreliable

Books made out of actual trees? Probably 10-20 (double that if you count technical books/manuals).

eBooks: 300-400 (maybe more?)

Hundreds. Maybe 1000.

I think you're going to find higher than average numbers here vs. the general public.

High hundreds for sure, maybe about 1000. Some on bookcases, some in boxes, some stacked on the floor.

I probably have about 150. I'm getting so many more. I asked for at least 5 specific books for Christmas already lol. I got all of the Terry Pratchett books during the pandemic but took a break from reading them to start the R.A Salvatore books. There are so many of those as well lol

E books: over 800 (read like 50 😭) Physical books: around 300?

Physical: about 100.
Ebooks: several dozen.
Audiobooks: a couple dozen.

A little over 87 shelf-feet of physical books, so over a thousand for me. My spouse prefers e-books and audiobooks and he’s a hoarder, so at least another 1000 for him.

Hundreds of you count eBooks, about 5 if you don't.

If I had to guess I would say around 1,000. If you include comic books probably another 1,000.

Physical, actual books? Probably less than 10. I'm one of those heathens that didn't mine adopting ebooks and audiobooks. I've moved somewhere around 20 times, and eventually it just became easier to shift everything to digital and donate my physical books.

@gabe
Estimating 500, but I'd have to check every flat surface in the apartment for a full count

Lmmfao!

Just fiction, we're over 1k, though most of that is paperbacks.

Hell, I used to have most of that 15 on the little bookshelf outside the bathroom. I keep some there for guests lol. Though, tbh, there's a tablet there now that gets used more often. I keep it loaded with ebooks, though it's rarely used for that.

I thinned out the actual books in favor of the tablet a few years ago, so there's only five books there now.

Climbing, hiking, IT cert, sci Fi, fantasy, many more ... easy 200. Our digital library is probably cost to the same amount

Too many to count. If ebooks count, I'm not even gonna estimate.

I have at least 30. I have enough that I need a shelf, but not so many I need a whole book shelf.

I have around 600-700 books, that include study books and novels.

My wife has maybe a couple hundred books. If you don't count my comics or my RPG manuals-- for reasons-- I own maybe a couple dozen. Counting the rooms we don't normally keep books in, we own a couple of times that average (if it's correct) per room in our house.

Man I have 15 atlases, how many books? Over a hundred for sure

Thats funny to me because recently I won a hundo on a scratch it and blew it on about 15 books via Amazon... Then I won another hundo and got 10 more.

Physical books peaked at around 4000, but over the course of a few moves over the last decade and a half have dropped to maybe 1500 or so now.

Ebooks, I really have no idea. A friend gave me a couple of large collections - well into four figures - some years back and I have acquired quite a few others since then one way or another - and this made me a lot happier about shedding the physical ones that were now duplicated. Anyway, Calibre tells me almost 9000, but I know that I have not actually added everything to that collection.

I'd be surprised if our number wasn't in four figures.

Far more than I care to count. I'd estimate somewhere between 500-2000 if I had to guess.

It's far less than it used to be now that I mostly read ebooks.

Easily a thousand, probably twice that with the boxes full in the attic and under the beds