How many books is too many?

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On Monday, which marked the 60th anniversary of the British publication of George Orwell’s ‘1984,’ I went to the bookshelf to find my copy and give it a commemorative flip-through.

Make that copies.

Pictured above are my two copies of ‘1984’: a Signet Classic paperback and a hardcover. The hardcover, which landed in my hands when a friend was getting a bunch of old books out of her office, is a 1949 edition from Harcourt, Brace & Co. It’s not quite a collectible -- the cover is fraying and slightly bent -- but it is an American first edition. It has the heft (not so hefty) and much of the look it did when it was first read. Before it was a classic. When I hold it, I get to imagine what it was like, buying it in 1949: It looks like just another novel. Beige, unassuming. When it was printed, when it was first read, there was no way its future cultural impact could be intuited, no way to know how iconic this book would become.

When I brought it home, I should have gotten rid of my old paperback. But the paperback was bought for class, and I kind of adore the fact that it was the anti-authoritarian discourse an authority figure forced me to read. I can throw the paperback in a bag and fill it with notes -- middling condition or not, I don’t plan to do that to a first-edition hardcover. Plus, I’m really used to that slightly Peter Max-style cover.

All of which makes sense to me, but the end result is that I have two copies of ‘1984.’ Do I really need two copies?

The underlying question is about why we keep books, and with the heydey of electronic books looming, it’s a question in the air. I think we keep books for many reasons: for the content, for the covers, for the interactivity (writing notes), for the way they feel, for the way they smell, for reference, for pleasure, for reading someday, for their value, for nostalgia, even for the sense of victory (after vanquishing ‘The Iliad,’ I put it on my shelf, like the head of a dead animal).

With all these reasons -- and I’m sure I’m missing some -- isn’t it easy to wind up with too many books on the shelf . . . I mean shelves? How many books is enough?

-- Carolyn Kellogg