A data-backed reflection on obsession, unread pages, and finding purpose in sharing

I always had a dream of setting up a library. Once I started earning, I found myself hoarding books in no time—visiting Crossword whenever possible and picking up titles with appealing covers or names that caught my attention. I began with self-help and short stories, and I have to say, over the years, my tastes have evolved beautifully. My interests are now varied, and my curiosity has deepened. I must admit, I still hoard books—and it doesn’t look like I’m stopping anytime soon.

I think the COVID era sped up the hoarding process. With all the time in the world, I used to skim through Goodreads, read about books and reading—and before I knew it, I was even more obsessed. Having already collected a sizable number, I ordered a book rack from IKEA and had the joy of assembling it and decorating it with my treasures. It felt like a childhood dream come true. Back in school, visits to the library always made me wish to have one of my own.

The new book rack still had room left, which of course meant I could buy more books. And so the hunt began. Fast forward to today—post-COVID—now I have an overflowing bookrack. Just last week, a friend and I have just kicked off a book club. And here I am again, reflecting on my reading journey and the bookshelf.

I always wanted to create a catalog of the books i owned. To do so was always on my mind, but the effort of typing each book name—and the time it would take—always overwhelmed me. But this time, I decided to use technology to my aid. I first tried using apple audio notes, which didn’t work very well. Soon, I shifted to ChatGPT’s voice feature, which was quick and smart. In no time, I had my catalog ready in Excel.

The next obvious step, looking at all the data, was: “Let’s get some insights!” So, once again, with ChatGPT’s help, I started digging deeper. Below are some of the findings—and my thoughts on them.

Total books owned: ~170+

Estimated investment: ₹74,000 (based on an average price of ₹427.75).
ChatGPT, being cautious, initially calculated this using the average of the first 10 books.

I had to give it explicit instructions to fetch the price of each book from the web. It couldn’t do this in one go, so it processed them in batches of 10. Eventually, the total came to ₹98,345—almost 1 lakh!

Top themes that emerged:
Mind & Meaning, Stories, Biographies & Memoirs, Society & Culture, Science & Space, and Adventure & Travel.

I also imported my Goodread’s data to The story graph, and it generated some nice visuals giving meaningful insights

Underrepresented or missing themes:
Economics & Finance, Business & Leadership, Art, Music & Design, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Mystery & Thriller.

Also lacking:
Classic Literature, Historical Fiction, and Romance.

I think I’m going to consciously pick up more books from Art, Classic Literature, and Romance in the coming days.

GPT also offered to help me create a diversification roadmap for my library. I skimmed through it for now, but I plan to check with my book club friends for recommendations in these genres. I must admit—it tweaked the recommendations to match my taste so well that I genuinely feel like GPT knows me.

There’s another important task I’ve been meaning to do: pull out my Goodreads data and compare it to my personal library. I’m worried it’ll be an eye-opening revelation—and proof that I am a book hoarder.

So, I exported my Goodreads data. It says I’ve read about 124 books so far. The yearly distribution of reading looks something like this:

With ~170 books in my library and only ~124 read, that leaves me with around 50 unread books (173 – 124 = 49).

At my current average pace of 7.9 books per year, it’ll take me about 6.5 years to finish the remaining ones. Meanwhile, the median is only 5.

Which means… I probably shouldn’t buy any new books for the next 10 years!
Oh man. How am I going to do that?

This analysis has confirmed it—I am a hoarder. A crazy book hoarder.

But then I remembered something I once read: your unread books are a visual representation of how much knowledge is still out there to be explored. They symbolize the vast unknown and your curiosity toward it.

It’s a beautiful thought to cling to—but the data is hard to ignore.

So, here’s what I’m going to do:
I’m opening up my library to my neighborhood, friends, family, and whoever’s nearby. If you’re in the area, just ping me—drop by, grab a book, take home, read and return when done.

And to give my ego a little massage, let me just say this:
By doing this, maybe I’m contributing—just a little bit—to the sanity of the human species in these chaotic times.

Jokes apart, I truly believe this will be a fulfilling experience for me.
If I can help even one child become a lifelong reader, it’ll all be worth it.

Happy reading!!

Here is the link to the catalog of the books in my Library

Credits

• Good reads and The Story graph: for data collection and for the insights
• ChatGPT for creating a catalog of the books
• Book Club members who got me thinking
• Self: To take actions on the ideas 😛