What if you could only read 30 books for the rest of your life? (My reply to Marie Kondo)

Marie Kondo made bookworms butthurt the world over by saying that books were clutter and that your personal library should be limited to 30 books. 

Actually I don’t really know what Marie Kondo said. I didn’t watch her Netflix series “Tidying Up” because it sounds like a duller version of Trinny and Susannah.

If your tidying program doesn’t involve teaching a hoarder not to shit in their kitchen sink, I’m not interested.

I’m only going off the furore on Twitter and in the online book lover community.

I’m guessing Marie Kondo didn’t say this was some iron-cast rule. I’m also guessing Marie Kondo didn’t pile wheelbarrows high with books and burn them in a public square while chanting ‘Arbeit macht frei.’

I know passions run high in the online book community. And I agree I wouldn’t want to live in a house with less than thirty books. My dream is to have my own personal Alexandria where I can take down a new volume every night.

But really…

1. Who gives a damn that an anally-retentive bestselling author puts a limit on how many books they think one should have? As Lebowski says, “That’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
2. What’s so bad about only having 30 books? 

Most people won’t read 30 books in their lifetime after they leave school.

And most people who read books somewhat voraciously won’t even hit 30 books read in a year. 

A part of me likes the idea of a 30-book library. 

I’m sick of wasting my time with inadequate books.

I want to read the best of the best.

We don’t have enough time in our lives to waste reading unconsciously.

You need to know exactly why you’re reading and use surgeon-like precision when it comes to choosing and deciding whether to stick with or abandon your books.

You also need to be reading intelligently. That means reading with a pen in your hand and treating fiction like non-fiction. 

If you read a book every single day of your life from the age of 5 until the age of your death at 85, you’d read 29,200 books. That’s not even 1% of what’s available. Chances are you won’t hit anywhere near that amount.

If you’re voracious enough to read a book a week from the age of 18 to the age of 50, we’re still talking way less than 2,000 books across a significant space of one’s lifetime. 

Books come and go. But I love the idea of keeping only those books that you intend to reread multiple times.

Keeping those books you intend to loan and gift to friends.

Keeping those books that you’ve written numerous book reviews on.

Keeping those books that you have notebooks filled with wild ideas about.

Keeping those books that touch the core of your being, keep your heart young, your mind alive, and you soul free. 

If you’re being highly selective…

30 books is ample for the ones that make your soul soar. 

So who’s up for a challenge?

What 30 books would you choose in your library?

Marie Kondo kicks down your door in the middle of the night and forces you to part with every single book for the rest of your life except for 30 or it’s off to the gulag with you.

I’ll start things off…

My 30-book Marie Kondo-proof library

1. Meditations – Marcus Aurelius 

2. Letters from a Stoic – Seneca 

3. Discourses, Fragments, Handbook – Epictetus

4. The Bible 

5. Moby Dick – Herman Melville 

6. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 

7. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl

8. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders

9. The Complete Works of Shakespeare 

10. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien 

11. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

12. The Stories of Anton Chekhov 

13. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

14. The Complete Works of Homer (The Iliad and The Odyssey)

15. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley 

16. In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust

17. The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri 

18. Paradise Lost – John Milton

19. Musashi – Eiji Yoshikawa 

20. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

21. Don Quixote – Cervantes 

22. The Stand – Stephen King

23. Ulysses – James Joyce

24. Dune – Frank Herbert

25. Middlemarch – George Eliot 

26. East of Eden – John Steinbeck 

27. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez 

28. Poets of the English Language – W. H. Auden (editor)

29. The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle

30. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey

Those are the 30 books I would choose in my 30-book library.

If I was stranded on a desert island, these are the books I’d take with me.

These are the books that I could personally read again and again and continue to get value out of indefinitely. 

Sorry, Marie Kondo. Your book doesn’t make the list.

What books would you choose if you could only choose 30?