Marie Kondo has played a critical role raising awareness of all the items that might cause people named "Joy" to spontaneously combust.

Books are alive with other people’s thoughts and pictures and art work. I respect my books and the effort so many have put into them. Shared intimacy with others, living and dead. And one can never have enough of them.
This lady can buzz off with her three book rule.

@2 It's 30 books, not 3, and it's not a hard rule. It's a suggestion for those folks who are hopelessly disorganized and not meant to criticize bibliophiles. If all your books "spark joy" then, by all means, keep them! The nice lady is just trying to help.

Thirty is a little better and whether my books spark joy or not isn’t an issue. Is it? Some books spark sadness and pain.
Sounds like this woman doesn’t know books at all.

Those clicks ain't gonna bait themselves, eh Charles?

The point is that it pleases you to keep them. Joy may not be the best descriptor, but it isn't meant to be taken so literally.

Do all things have awareness (if not agency)?
Is my septic tank sentinent?
Is my Library?

If you pat your car's dash, is that a sign of something?
Should I get it checked? It's an '82.
Thanks, Dr.

Of course I shed books I no longer have any interest in.
If she doesn’t mean Joy, then she shouldn’t use that word.

Indeed--a cheap laugh.

Seems like we have entered some new age where even the most obvious pointers for how to live a basic life are treated as some kind of deep wisdom

Jordan Peterson: "Hey, remember to wash your penis once in a while."

"Ah yes, how could we have not realized it before?"

Marie Kondo: "Throw away your garbage instead of hoarding it."

"Revolutionary!"

@2 and @3 There's no rule, 3 or 30 or anything. She said that around 30 is what works for her, but her whole method is based on figuring out what works for you, not fitting your lifestyle into someone else's rules. All she wants people to do is consider each of their books individually to figure out if they spark joy as discrete objects, rather than just looking at their collection as a monolith. She doesn't have any problem with someone having a lot of books as long as they love each one individually. All she would (likely) object to is someone deciding that they like having lots of books and then keeping tons that they don't actually want or need just so they can continue having lots of books.

I like the idea of treating your stuff as stuff to take care of and not as crap to hoard in heaps w/ no regard for its treatment/condition. If you anthropomorphise that to animism I suppose I can see that.

@13 Agree, and I think that is the crux of what makes her methods effective with Americans.