But “stacks” are also the shelving on which books are arranged, or the part of a library designed for storage, access to which is often restricted. If you swear on a stack of Bibles, you are swearing on a lot of Bibles. A stack can also refer to a great quantity. such a pile or heap with its constituents arranged in an orderly fashion” and traces the word back to a reference to fish arranged in a “stac” in 1300.

My very own compact Oxford English Dictionary defines a stack as a “pile, heap or group of things, esp. These compatriots couldn’t imagine a house without books. And those who were pro-books embraced the controlled chaos of the piles and what they represented: the home of a reader. I wondered: What was at stake in this debate? Why were my stacks of books the source of so much disagreement? Those who found the books anxiety-inducing and cluttering weren’t being nasty they genuinely couldn’t stand the idea of piles of books all over a house. “To me nothing is more personal or friendly than a huge stack of books waiting for their turn to be read.” (Months later, someone posted that she had lost her cat and most of her belongings in a fire, and that although about a third of her books were un-salvageable, she kept and cleaned the majority of the sooty, soggy books and took them to her new home, where they now reside in towers.) Several noted that they liked the fact that the books had not been put away for the photographs. To me nothing says home more than a stack of books,” piped in another. “I absolutely LOVE that there are books everywhere that you turn in this home. “It’s ok to have stuff,” wrote one reader. Not all readers were against the stacks of books many came to my defense. A small, constantly-changing stack lives on my bedside table. I also had eleven stacks of books in my home office and two in the guest room. And these were just the books in two rooms of my house. There were 233 books stacked in my foyer, mostly in front of the old radio. On the particular day that I was reading these comments, I determined that there were two stacks of books on my coffee table, four stacks under the coffee table, one stack on my sofa, two stacks on the end table next to the sofa, one stack on the chair across the room and another two under an armchair, one stack on the end table next to the armchair, one stack on top of my bar, one stack next to my bookshelf, and seven tall stacks in my foyer, pushed up against the obliterated antique radio.Īll told, I counted 98 books in my living room that were not shelved, not including the one-volume micrographically reproduced edition of the Oxford English Dictionary that sat alone in the corner of the room, next to my bar, with its domed magnifying glass on top. Move the books to where they will be read, she instructed. Why would anyone pile books in front of a perfectly good piece of furniture? Another reader wondered what the “point” of the stacks of books might be. I had obliterated my radio with these distracting books. It looks like there is a beautiful, old radio behind it just waiting to be discovered! Too bad we can’t see it.” And from someone else: “The stack of books in the entryway is a distraction. “The pile of books right when you open the front door throws me off a bit,” wrote one reader. Who’s going to get down on their hands and knees to pick out a book off the floor?” Others were concerned about the piles of books in the foyer, as if their presence in this liminal space might block one’s easeful movement into the domestic sphere. One person was convinced that I was destroying the books: “I get that some people are nuts about books (I keep my collection around 50, ‘1 in 1 out’ style), but you might as well take care of them and give them a chance at a longer life. I have moved lots of books to my office on the college campus where I work, but lots remain. Among my stuff are many books-some on shelves, some in stacks. I like to spend Sundays at flea markets and antiques malls. I like a lot of things in my field of vision. I’m a collector, and I live in an unabashedly stuff-oriented house.

I was reading the comments section of the “House Tour” of my North Carolina home on the design site Apartment Therapy. “I would go completely bonkers with the books stacked everywhere,” said another. “I don’t think book towers would work for me,” wrote one reader.

Stacks of books