Booking Through Thursday: Size Matters

This week's Booking Through Thursday topic is about personal library size. This could get pretty embarrassing, but here goes:

1. What’s the largest your personal library has ever been? What’s the greatest number of books you’ve ever owned at one time? (Estimates are fine.)
   
   I suppose our library is just about as big right now as it's ever been. My husband and I are both book people and acquisitive types, so we don't weed out the collection as often as we should. There are books in every room of our apartment, except for the bathrooms (gotta draw the line someplace), and we've got books in boxes, packed away in a couple of storage rooms. I have no idea exactly how many books we own; I've got over 2000 listed in my Library Thing account, but that doesn't include all my husband's lit crit books, Loeb classical editions, and most of the history books in our library. So, altogether, I'd say we own somewhere between 2500-3000 books.
   
   
2. Is your collection NOW the biggest it’s ever been? Or have you down-sized?
   
   See answer to the question above. Actually, we are in the process of downsizing; or at least thinking about it. In the past year, we've donated books to our local library and to an annual book sale at my husband's workplace (unfortunately, we keep buying new books to replace the ones we weed out). We have piles of books we really would like to find new homes for, but realize that in reality we'll probably end up simply throwing a lot of them out. (Sob!)
   
   
3. What’s the fewest number of books you’ve ever owned (not counting your pre-reading years)?
   
   Hmmm. Hard to answer this one. I suppose my book collection was at its tiniest when I was about ten years old, right after my father died. My mother and I moved in with her parents and there just wasn't room for all my toys and books to move with us. I had to choose a few of my most precious possessions to hang onto, and the rest were given away to "less fortunate" kids. At the time, of course, I couldn't imagine any kid less fortunate than I was. But I survived -- and started rebuilding my library very quickly. Occasionally my mother would have one of her clearing-out fits and pressure me to winnow out the books I no longer wanted. The problem with that is that I wanted all of them! It's a problem I'm still living with today. (Hello, my name is Joy and I'm a bookaholic.)