These just sound like comforting lies to tell yourself when in reality, for most people, it's probably just vanity, hoarding, and consumerism. Book collecting has more in common with DVD collecting than some aspiration of knowledge. At worst it's no different than a Funko Pop addiction.
My cure is to maintain a single shelf of books that I own. Just one shelf. Either a shelf inside a book case or a long shelf that stretches a wall. But either way, once it fills up, you have to being replacing. Can't just go to every book sale and buy mercilessly.
On the flip side, I have most of the books I continue to use after graduate school, even though the material can be found online in most places.
Why?
1. Books are way more permanent than Kindle's terms of service, PDFs require fragile digital storage either locally or through a cloud service, etc.
2. I refer to things I read years or even a decade after reading them, and sometimes need a refresher
In addition to these, I have classics, scifi, novels I found interesting, and loads of pop-[field] introductory readings for my children to enjoy.
It is awesome to hear a six year old talk about what they read in "A Brief History of Time" and let their unbound curiosity and imagination try to expand their understanding of the universe.
My parents, somewhat hoarders at that stage of life, had years of Readers Digest and National Geographic when I was young. Having access to decades of print materials that most today would minimalistically confine to the rubbish bin set the direction of my life for exploration and discovery.
I also think that buying books somehow creates the feeling of being productive, "oh I have bought this book, I will learn so much and end up becoming a better person", while (when you don't end up reading the book), you just wasted your time and money. Much better to always only buy one book, absorb the knowledge/enjoy the story and only afterwards buy the next.
The article has a refers to a few sources towards the end including:
One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this as vanity or consumerism.
That line reads as though more than 350 books might actually be detrimental. A slightly more detailed explanation from clicking through the link in the article:
> The study, led by Dr. Joanna Sikora of Australian National University, found the greatest gains in adult literacy, numeracy, and ICT skills when a home had from 80 to 350 books — no additional gains were seen above that number.
So just store 80-350 books in the attic and kids' scores in literacy and numeracy will magically improve. Once they study it some more, maybe the books don't even need to be there all the time. Maybe we can just fill up a truck with thousands of books and have it zig zag across town and every kids will make more progress.
80-350 books is not what the article is about, it's about owning more books than you can read. I assure you, you can read 80-350 books, and I assume that almost everyone commenting here has done so.
I know you’re joking but what you suggest is real, some of the books that had the most influence on me I stole from a box packed away in the storage room as a child.
I definitely spent a big chunk of my childhood climbing through junk in my parents attic hunting for books, and found a lot of gems. Hiding 350 books in the attic may not be the placebo you’re looking for :)
My cure is to maintain a single shelf of books that I own. Just one shelf. Either a shelf inside a book case or a long shelf that stretches a wall. But either way, once it fills up, you have to being replacing. Can't just go to every book sale and buy mercilessly.