Why do we keep so many books?
I have a respectable size book collection made up of mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks, hardcovers, fiction, non-fiction, reference and so forth. Some of the reference books I refer to a lot, the mass markets on the other hand are usually read once and then shelved. I know there are a lot of people out there who have a much bigger collection of books than I do. And there are those that constantly purge their collection to make room for new books.
Why do a lot of us keep so many books, especially if there’s little chance we’ll read them again?
I view books like trophies. Since I was never into sports, I don’t have any ‘real’ trophies to show off. Books represent my literary accomplishments. At the same time, they take up a lot of space and can get very heavy when packed into boxes making them a pain to move.

Anthony, Mar 15, 2010 re: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, ebooks, and the definition of irony