A Sea of Books

I am wading in a sea of books. As I type, two books press against my left arm and another tome grazes my right. Below the three books nearest me there are other volumes. Those not in piles have arranged themselves in a U around my legs stretching from my reclining position to the farthest reaches beyond my feet. As a surprise to no one I'm sure, these volumes all bear a certain name on them either as author or subject, and that would be James Joyce.
Beyond my sea of literature, stretching onto the floor dwell many more tomes resembling the effects of a nuclear bomb on a library. The volumes littered across the floor are largely those that have fallen from the couch and have proven to either not be necessary for the remainder of my paper or simply too far away to reach. I prefer to think that they are unnecessary to my research because I'm not going back through them to look. Several of the floor volumes have found themselves opened to random pages or lying splayed at odd angles. I suppose if there were a nuclear blast there'd be loose pages floating around, but fortunately I haven't been reduced to shreading any texts yet.
I used to have more respect for books. As a child I was raised to respect books, to put them on their proper shelves, never to throw them, and certainly never to write in them. What happened to that? Some of my volumes have an equal number of printed lines and notes scribbled in the margins. I ask again, what happened to my respect for books? I would like to think that studying literature this much would make me treat books with infinitely more respect, but not so much. I look all across my room and see volumes here and there, some sitting under glasses, others lying on chairs, some piled horizontally against a vertically aligned bookshelf. I have far too many books I dare say. But then I ask, is that a possibility? Can I have too many books? Too many for anyone or too many for me? I don't know I don't know I don't know.