This was in Philadelphia, in a large room on the second floor of a three-story house on Baltimore Avenue. … [T]here were books, lots of them. Books lined the mantel of the bricked-up fireplace. Books were stacked at the foot of the bed; they were strewn on the floor around the desk like a blast radius. Piles of books that frequently collapsed into small landslides annexed the nightstand. A stray book or two often lay on the floor in the middle of the room, the aftermath of hasty between-class transitions. For the first time in my life, I felt I had too many books.
—An excellent essay by James Santel in The Paris Review Daily on whether there is such thing as having too many books. (via niconovito)