I have yet to visit any house that couldn't have another couple of hundred books squirreled away inside of it with careful planning. I have visited a few friends who created built in book alcoves between the timbers of the house, cutting out a section of dry wall, adding shelves, and framing in the alcove.
When I moved from our 4,000 sqft house to a 2,000 sqft condo we divested ourselves of the 800 linear feet of custom built book shelves. Not a huge amount, by some measurements, but is still "quite a lot of books." Not quite enough to warp L-space, but enough that I swear I could hear the occasional Ook! from what we euphemistically called The Library. We pared down to a much more reasonable 200 linear feet.
I will say that going through those books was an emotional toil for both my wife and I. But after moving six or so times in 20 years for work, it was time.
When you have to move around the country a bunch of times in a few years and each time those precious books make up more than half of a 26' ft truck packed tightly into small, heavy boxes, you get tired of having books quite quickly...
...but then again, I can't find many to part with anymore after all of the rounds of culling that were done. And so it goes.
The last time we moved, we used a company whose rates were based on weight.
I was chatting with our moving company’s owner about how interesting it was to look at everything in our house, and ask myself, “am I willing to pay $x.xx/lb to keep this?”
He said the most expensive move they’d ever done was for a married couple of literature professors, who were unwilling to part with any of their collection.
You can do a lot of clever book storage, but it tends to be quite a lot of work to do so. Because you’re going to have to build things yourself to make it custom fit. This is a process which involves quite a lot of creativity and spatial awareness to do well, on top of the manual labour and at least some craftsmanship (books are heavy) to accomplish. So it’s not weird to me at all that many people struggle with it. I mean for many that combination of things + the time it takes isn’t easy, and then if you can’t pay for it, it’s just a massive project to accomplish in your free time. Tinyhome and DIY YouTube videos are excellent for inspiration, but it’s still a lot of work to get it done in a way that looks nice.
What strikes me as the wildest, and this is obviously very anecdotal for the place where I live in Denmark, is how little help you can get from “pre-made” solutions. IKEA has the least inspiring book storage options known to man. Which might be expected, but around here every store is basically stocking what IKEA has, at least until until you get into the 10x and above price ranging. Which is where you’re probably hiring an interior designer and handymen to do it for/with you anyway. You can do a lot of clever hacks with a lot of the Ikea styles furniture, but much of it is in really shitty materials and for books (books are heavy) it’s almost always better to buy wood and stuff to hang wood on walls and then do it yourself.
So while I agree with what you say, I also appreciate why it’s just easier to have a pile of books.
When I moved from our 4,000 sqft house to a 2,000 sqft condo we divested ourselves of the 800 linear feet of custom built book shelves. Not a huge amount, by some measurements, but is still "quite a lot of books." Not quite enough to warp L-space, but enough that I swear I could hear the occasional Ook! from what we euphemistically called The Library. We pared down to a much more reasonable 200 linear feet.
I will say that going through those books was an emotional toil for both my wife and I. But after moving six or so times in 20 years for work, it was time.