We used to have over a thousand books, my husband and I. About five years ago, we downsized and got rid of lots of them. Now we have about two hundred. I call them our "core collections"-- he has his favorite books and I have mine but we cheat a little. We have a sixty volume set of
The Great Books. They're published by
The Encyclopedia Brittanica and contain the complete works of great writers like Homer, Plato, and Shakespeare and the "bestsellers" of many others like Dickens, Hemingway, and Faulkner. It's a good tradeoff… you still have a pretty meaty library at your fingertips but at the same time you don't have all the b ook dust, which we almost always had, seeing as dusting is just about my least favorite activity on earth.