Flashback time:
One of the most important and beneficial trainings I ever underwent as a young writer was trying to script a comic. I had to cut down all of my dialogue to fit into speech bubbles. I was staring closely at each sentence and striking out any word I could.
“But then I paid for Twitter!”
How about the second sentence1?
The exact number of shelves is superfluous for the point being made, as is specifying that the bookshelves almost go to the ceiling. We get it, there’s a lot of books. Enough books to contain even the longest Yud tweets.
[1]: Excluding a full page long spiel of self-promotion, metatext and a paragraph of what I assume is supposed to be foreshadowing for spooky things to come.
everything else aside, why would you describe a bookshelf as stacked to the brim. what brim
The brim of the bookshelves’ hat. You see, wizard bookshelves have hats formed like fedoras < … insert 6,000 words of impromptu worldbuilding here … >
That seems like an inefficient use of space if the ceiling is anything more than six feet high. If they’re ten foot ceilings, then the shelves are spaced about 20 inches apart, which is rather larger than typical books. No wonder there are multiple layers on some shelves and books overflowing onto other surfaces.
Ah, but each additional sentence strikes home the point of absurd over-abundance!
Quite poetically, the sin of verbosity is commited to create the illusion of considered thought and intelligence, in the case of hpmor literally by stacking books.
Amusingly him describing his attempt as “striking words out” rather than “rewording” or “distilling”, i think illustrates his lack of editing ability.