What Books Would I Keep If I Could Only Keep 30? 💀💭 | The Book Castle | 2024 

👏👏👏 The Shadow of the Wind is my favourite book ❤

I wouldn't put TBR books on my list, but that's because I'm a heavy library user and don't usually have a physical TBR.

I just read Shadow of the Wind and loved it. Even had to underscore sone lines of interesting thoughts.

I am a huge rereader so I think I would almost only keep favorites. I will go to my shelves after watching and select my list. This is an interesting idea!

Thanks for all of your lovely videos and good book recs. Here, I’ve made a list of my own. It has 55 books. I couldn’t do 30 but that’s okay. I have been reading for longer. I too am not much of a re-reader. But if I only get to keep 55 books, I want to keep a good number of the ones I know I love. But at the same time, there are lots of books I still want to read. So here is my list, without commentary, if anybody is interested. Or if nobody is. Fiction I have read and would happily read again if my TBR was not so damn long: Catch 22 (Heller) Watership Down (Adam’s) Red Sorghum (Mo Yan) In Watermelon Sugar (Brautigan) Deadwood (Dexter) Ragtime (Doctorow) The Road (McCarthy) Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) Nine Stories (Salinger) The Hobbit (Tolkien) Kafka on the Shore (Murakami) Black Rain (Ibuse) To Live (Yu Hua) The Master of Go (Kuwabata) Madadam Trilogy (Atwood) Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut) Hagakure (Tsunetomo) Leaves of Grass (Whitman) The Fuck Up (Nersesian) The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Basho) The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner) The Makioka Sisters (Tanizaki) The Milagro Beanfield War (Nichols) I Am a Cat (Soseki) Collected stories of Ernest Hemingway Lonesome Dove (McMurtry) Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe) A Fine Balance (Mistry) The Fan Man (Kotzwinkle) Psalms from the King James Bible Nonfiction I have read: Factfullness (Rosling) From Dawn to Decadence (Barzun) The Ancestor’s Tale (Dawkins) The Language Instinct (Pinker) The Moral Animal (Wright) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Shirer) Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery (Asimov) The Discoverers (Boorstin) I Will Fight No More Forever (Beal) The Diary of a young Girl (Frank) Nonfiction I will read soon: Emperor of all Maladies (Mukherjee) Behave (Sapolsky) I Contain Multitudes (Young) The invention of Nature (Wulf) The Power Broker (Caro) The Half has Never Been Told (Baptist) Fiction I have put off for way too long but hope to read one day: Middlemarch Pride and Prejudice A Suitable Boy The Brothers Karamazov Anna Karinana Ulysses Moby Dick

I always add many books to my tbr after your videos, thank you , we have a similar taste in books.

What a great video idea! Just today I thought to myself, if I ever went into van life, perhaps each of my adult children would allow me to have a bookshelf in their home.

As usual, you just added more books to my TBR. Thanks Alice :D

Great video and a very interesting selection of books. 😊

Only 30 books would be impossible, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I get stressed just thinking about it.

Good luck with what you choose to read, I hope you get some great stories. Currently reading the Count of Monte Cristo. Very good but I maybe some time!

Fascinating. I wouldn’t have done tbr or maybe. I’ll have to think about it. Like you, I collect books and I read books. 😀

First time here and very enjoyable to have on in the backrground as I did some tasks. Heard Locke Lamora and had to pause to write a comment. It's an amazing book series, I've used it as a reread to get out of a reading slump and it makes me just excited to get back into the swing of things. Great worldbuilding and the food! These books makes me wish I ate meat just because of how wonderfully it describes the food and I want to eat absolutely everything.

I like this idea, I need to make a list!

I have an emergency shelf by the front door that is my keep in an emergency books. I started making the list, so that if the house ever burned down or was torn down in a tornado that I would not have to start over completely fresh. Only mostly fresh. Although, now that I think about it I should probably update that list for safety reasons.

It dropped to 5. But another 5 are on my TBR. Plus an additional 2, Love & Fury and Rouge I am interested in. Great list. I think my list would be all my prettiest editions.

I am a mood reader also, Alice. Sometimes I like lots of choices and sometimes I want a specific book. YES, ALWAYS the PHYSICAL book. I do not listen to any audible, bks. on tape or whatever it's called. I have lots on my kindle and haven't read ANY! I live in a small 1 bdrm. apt. Storage is a real problem.I only have 3 medium size bookcases! I have books in baskets, decorated big boxes, maybe 7 large tote bags stacked in my bdrm., bks. in my clothes drawers, stacked on my night table, one end table (only have one) and lastly, part of my bdrm. closet top shelf. 😑😑 It's a REAL problem...o yes, recently bought one of those " library carts on wheels". I would give anything to have bookcases like yours w/ doors! A dream. When I had my house I had floor to ceiling bookcases. I could never pick 30 bks...you did well. Did you have an anxiety attack after filming? HA! HA! Thanks Alice, always enjoy your channel 🤗

love this idea ~i'm trying to work out the ratio of Read and TBR books i would have on my list and it's not easy!

I love collecting books too!!!

I bought a Dorothy Whipple today at the library book sale and I thought of you because you're the only person I've seen talk about her!

I'm just starting, and I've read 8 of the previous list. We will see if that changes.

Oh this is so hard! I like so many series, how could I choose!!

Loved this video! I started thinking which books I would keep and started panicking 😅 I guess I would def. keep Stoner!

I can understand needing a weird book 😅 its a good mix between read and tbr, I dont know what I would choose tbh.. maybe 20 books I love and would reread then 10 tbr ones 🤔

Lies of Locke Lamora and What The River Knows are two books im super excited to read but keep saving for "when im in the mood" hahah honestly great list!! btw what edition is that of "The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi"? it's gorgeous 😍

This was a nice video to watch. If you could include one poetry book in your list, which one would it be?

I would likely be extra nerdy and calculate my current ratio of read to unread books I own today and use that as a guideline in this exercise. Off the top of my head I have many more unread than read, so it might be like yours. My read would probably be the ones I have already reread first (which are few). Then I would start pulling based on gut alone and then consider what might be easy to get out of my library. IDK I have a few hundred books so this would probably be very painful.

I don’t know if I could narrow it down to 30, but on my list without hesitation would be: The Great Gatsby The Secret History If We Were Villains The Age of Innocence And Ladies of the Club Something from Amor Towles Something from Kate Morton John Gwynne’s Blood sworn trilogy Pride and Prejudice Something from Charles Dickens Something from Thomas Hardy Helene Hanff bindup I would pick some from my books about books collection The final 10 I would reserve choosing from any of the new books I’m now reduced to borrowing from the library.😊 Whew!🤯

In case you don’t know, Japanese has a word for your second hobby-to have and keep books that aren’t necessarily collectors items including many that you simply won’t live long enough to read. That word is tsundoku. Isn’t that interesting? I think so. There is no such word in English that I know of. Anyway, nice hobby if you have the space.

❤love from Thailand

❤📚📚📚❤

Please read A Song for Achilles. You have it on your shelf . It will turn into a firm favourite😊

I remember doing this "challenge" the last time you did and I wonder how my selection would change. I only picked favourite books that I owned (sometimes "saving" a spot for the upcoming books in a series), but a lot of things changed in nearly 4 years... and a precious few favourites! I'll probably tag you on Instagram once I've done it, it'll be fun! (Preview: I kept the Harry Potter series last time, I don't think I will this time. What will I choose instead?)