There is Edward Robb Ellis, an 87-year-old writer, who shares his four-room apartment in Chelsea with what he estimates to be 10,000 books, including, he reveals proudly, five sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ron Kolm, a writer and bookstore night manager, lost his bedroom in Long Island City, Queens, to his archive of downtown writing. For years, he and his wife have slept in the living room on a fold-out bed.
He recalled watching his reading material rise to a height of seven feet. ''I felt like Schliemann, only in reverse,'' Mr. Kolm said, referring to the 19th-century German archeologist. ''Instead of excavating the levels of Troy, I was creating them.''
But I should be patting myself on the back because I definitely don't have 10,000 books, nor do I have even one encyclopedia set. Right??
''I've been in places where there were books in the bathtub,'' said Henry Holman, who rummages through apartments as the buyer for Gryphon Bookshop on the Upper West Side. ''I've been in apartments where there were books in the bed. I've been in apartments where you were hard put to imagine exactly where they did sleep.''
Okay, but if you fall asleep with a book in your bed, that's not the same thing as storing them there. (Uh, hypothetically?) But this might be my favorite clause, about the architect who designed Trump Tower:
"his pirate books are overflowing into his architectural books"
Never had a problem there! Okay, we're all good, who's up for a dollar cart run?
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