Books
Karl Lagerfeld with some of his 30,000 books. Karllagerfeld.com
The perfect antidote to our online existence
There is huge pleasure to be found in owning tons of books, says Ed Simon in Literary Hub. Ernest Hemingway amassed 9,000, Thomas Jefferson nearly 6,500 and Hannah Arendt 4,000. The Italian philosopher Umberto Eco’s 50,000-strong collection was considered “one of the largest personal libraries on the continent” in 1970; today, it’s “paltry” compared to the 300,000 that belonged to the late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Then there’s the 76-year-old former sugar plant worker in India who has been collecting since the age of 20 and now has a truly staggering two million titles.
Books are the perfect antidote to our very online existence. There’s something in their physicality, a joy in the feel of it in your hands, the rustling of the pages and the smell of its binding. There’s nothing better than a home with books “crammed in every room”, piling up on nightstands, filling grand shelves in living rooms and taking up space on idle surfaces. Where CDs and DVDs lasted barely two decades, physical books have endured, even as tech billionaires have churned out e-books and vast libraries of audio versions. An individual’s collection reveals all sorts about their character through the nicks and notes and dog-ears. And the “chain of stewardship” that most books go through – a novel given from father to son, a stellar read passed down from a great aunt – is a process full of thought and love. Of course owning a heap of books isn’t as good as possessing all the knowledge within them. But it’s a close second.
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