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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Saturday, March 08, 2014


Shelf after shelf of unread books 

From The BBC

6 March 2014

A survey to mark World Book Day has found that the majority of books found in British houses have not been read - but is that really surprising, asks Ben Milne.

The average British household has 138 volumes on its shelves, less than half of which have been read, according to research by storage company Shurgard. "It is a kind of peacock-feather display," says the writer and critic John Sutherland. He thinks that the proportion of unread books will depend upon their location in the house - "Living rooms are display windows." Sutherland says he suspects the volumes in the lavatory are more likely to have been read, as are those on the bedroom shelves. It would be a slightly scary household where every single book had been read. That said, there's arguably something suspicious about someone who hasn't read any of the books on their shelves. Those prominently displayed volumes of Karl Ove Knausgard or Margaret Attwood may make you look like a heavyweight intellectual, but inevitably there is going to come a point when a visitor looks at their unbroken spines and asks: "Just how many of these have you actually read?" On the other hand, one could adopt the defiant stance of Lord Redesdale, father of the famous Mitford sisters, who claimed to have only ever read one book in his life - White Fang by Jack London. "He enjoyed [it] so much, he vowed never to read another one," Deborah Mitford once recalled.

So, there's a balance to be achieved. "A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing," writes Susan Hill in Howard's End Is On The Landing, her memoir of trying to read all the books in her house, "but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with potential to burst into new life." And emotional attachment is one of the main reasons people give the survey for not throwing out books - they're "particles of ourselves", says Sutherland. If nothing else, they're decorative. In the words of a title by the novelist Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish A Room. Perhaps you own a copy. Maybe you've even read it.

[I suppose that after learning that the average Brit reads 3 books a year the fact that the average household has 138 books on its shelves is moderately impressive. Of course, as I average about 70 books a year at the moment (with more in my youth) you would imagine that I have rather more than 138 books piled up on various bookcases. Indeed a quick ‘head’ count reveals around 100 books per shelf – 50 in front and another 50 tucked in behind. My total is probably in the region of 4-5,000 give or take a few hundred. Of these I’m probably running at around 1,000 – 1,500 unread. Not because they are on ostentatious display (for who exactly) but because I haven’t got around to them yet or, quite possibly, my interest has moved on from that particular topic/genre and I’m waiting to circle back to it at some point in the future. Book wise I always expect myself to be ranked in the top 5% of readers – with the probable exception of classic reading. Of course the frightening thing to consider is that if the average is 138 and I have 5,000 and I’m far from unique then there are a considerable number of homes with few or no books in them at all…. Now that’s scary stuff!]

6 comments:

Stephen said...

Not counting my shelf of reference books (would anyone really read an encyclopedia of scientific terms?), I can say that...5/6ths of the books in my home have been read. The remainder consists of a handful of books I bought but haven't gotten around to reading (World Until Yesterday, Commander of Rome, Antifragile, etc) as well as a few dozen Trek books I bought in a box off ebay when a few years ago when I wanted a massive Trek collection.

I wonder if a lot of unread books are simply inherited?

CyberKitten said...

sc said: I can say that...5/6ths of the books in my home have been read. The remainder consists of a handful of books I bought but haven't gotten around to reading....

Part of the reason I have so many unread (yet) is that I tend to buy at least as many as I read - or probably slightly more. Plus the fact that some years ago one of the guys at work was de-cluttering his house and gave me several hundred paperbacks he no longer wanted. I'm still working my way through them!

sc said: I wonder if a lot of unread books are simply inherited?

Probably lots of reasons. I do tend to see things that look interesting and pick them up only to have moved on - curiosity wise - by the time I get around to reading them. If I don't read a book within 4-6 weeks of purchase it could be years before it gets read. Case in point is my next novel by Jules Verne. I've had it for at least 20 years on my shelf!

VV said...

I only have one shelf of un-read books in my home, and I feel guilty every time I look at it. I don't keep books downstairs in the public rooms on display. The only reading material downstairs are magazines in the bathroom or sun room. The real reading material is upstairs in and on my nightstand, or on bookshelves in my daughter's room that I have turned into a cozy place for reading. Now if I could just sit still long enough to read. I also have a dozen books on my iPad/Kindle. I have read all but about 5 I think. The bulk of my pleasure reading is done in summer and winter breaks.

CyberKitten said...

v v said: I don't keep books downstairs in the public rooms on display. The only reading material downstairs are magazines in the bathroom or sun room.

The only room I don't have books in is the bathroom. Not exactly book friendly!

v v said: on bookshelves in my daughter's room that I have turned into a cozy place for reading.

I'd love a proper reading room...

v v said: I have read all but about 5 I think.

I'm confident that I will die with books I now own unread. If I wasn't interested in so much maybe I could stop buying so many books and piling them up around the house - basically wherever I have room.

VV said...

To have interest in many things is wonderful!

CyberKitten said...

It is good, yes. I'm hardly ever bored and find myself scuttling off to learn something new everything something new and at least potentially interesting appears on my radar.

I'm looking into Art Theory ATM.... [lol]