The study explores the social and political role of Czech home libraries duringthe communist era (1948–1989). Analyses of qualitative data from existing oral history readingprojects and methodological impulses of memory studies serve as grounds for multipleinterpretations of this specific role. Home libraries can be considered as a counterreactionto the official propaganda and to regular purges of politically unsuitable books from publiclibraries; a reflection of building up alternatives to the centrally controlled public sphere;and perhaps even as a form of book consumers’ need for hoarding as a reaction to the shortageof desirable volumes on the state-operated book market. However, we argue that thepersistent position of Czech home libraries as the depository of social and cultural capitalcan be traced in the enduring, nearly cultic veneration of the book and reading in the Czechbook owners’ book memory.