God loves books

Quot libros, quam breve tempus: So many books, so little time

Here's the LIST of LISTS (best of), for the 2008 year in literature; link.
I had to share this portal to so much goodness :-)

Remember, donate used books to:
-your library,
-or here, for u.s. children, mainly
-or here, for international.

"Heaven is a kind of library"
Some information on the world's biggest library, the u.s. library of congress:

In 1992, the Library acquired its 100 millionth item. The collections now include approximately 15M books, 39M manuscripts, 13M photographs, 4M maps, more than three-and-a-half million pieces of music, and more than half a million motion pictures.

The Library's collection of more than 5,600 incunabula (books printed before 1500) is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and its collections of maps, atlases, newspapers, music, motion pictures, photographs, and microforms are probably the largest in the world. In addition, the Library holds newspapers, prints, posters, drawings, talking books, technical reports, videotapes and disks, computer programs, and other audio, visual, and print materials.

-Hmm, it just said 15M books.
But, on another page it says, "Today's Library of Congress is an unparalleled world resource. The collection of more than 138 million items includes more than 32 million cataloged (sp? I thought it was 'catalogued') books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world's largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings.
-So that says 32M.

-I guess this is the final word: "20,854,810 cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system"
(Does this include the @3M volume law library?)

I just wish one library held Absolutely Everything. Maybe the internet will do that at some point. AHA!!.     dailylit, a service (with 800+ free books, but otherwise by payment) that provides books in installments by email or rss.

I'll close with this: The Library receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to the collections daily. The majority of the collections are received through the Copyright registration process, as the Library is home to the U.S. Copyright Office.

The Library's role as a copyright depository has contributed to the popular belief that it contains one copy of every book published in the United States. It does not. Its collections are the most comprehensive in the country, but it is not a library of record in the legal sense; it is not required to retain all copyright deposits and, except for the period 1870-1909, it has never attempted to do so.

You'd have to be a helluva speedreader to read 32M books, lol.
Or to ingest 138M items..
A website says that 100,000 books are published every year (worldwide?), of which 10% are novels.

Another site says, in regard to my original query, of how many books are there, "After long and extensive research, I finally discovered a website ofthe University of California, where an attempt was made to figure up the US and worldwide number of original book titles that have been published, both in and out of print. Their result was:-- 65 million book titles --"

Happy Reading!