Books

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As I’m in the process of moving into a smaller space, the one thing I dreaded most was trimming down my personal library. I love books! I’ve always loved books! And I clung to this notion of the more books, the better.

This morning it dawned on me that I don’t love books anymore. The fluttering in my stomach that occurs when I’m walking past floor-to-ceiling stacks in the library? Not so much about the books.

The good news for me today is that what books contain can be found in many places.

Comments

3 Responses to “Books”

juffie on December 11th, 2006 1:39 am

Pack em all in boxes, ship em the cheapest way USPS offers, and I’ll sell them for you on-line at various places. The “Long Tail” means someone somewhere will want nearly every one of your books!
Dan Harper on December 14th, 2006 11:05 am

We have moved three times in the past five years (each move more than a thousand miles), and about half our belongings are books. Mostly my books. So I wound up giving some books away to make moving easier.

But I have since regretted losing many of the books I gave away, because now we’re living in a place that doesn’t have a good library. In a couple of cases, I had to buy new copies of books I had given away. (And no, I can’t find them on the internet, because the internet has almost nothing published after 1922 due to copyright laws.)

I guess it depends on the role books play in your life. If you’re a writer, a scholar, a preacher, or a teacher, books are essential tools of your trade. It’s no big deal to get rid of books that are easy to find (I could get rid of “Alice in Wonderland,” for example). But it’s dangerous to get rid of rare, out-or-print, and small press run books (I can’t let go of the two volumes of the letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, RWE’s daughter), for though those books may be obscure you may never be able to find them again.

Personally, I’d love to get rid of half my books. But I’d hate myself later if I did. Just my $.02 worth.
LaReinaCobre on December 15th, 2006 1:15 pm

Good points, Dan. I will definitely keep them in mind as I sort through the books.

I’ll be getting rid of a lot of my fiction - I don’t read much of it compared to non fiction, and none of it is rare. And I’ll be getting rid of books that I’ve read and have no intention of reading again (including some reference books that seemed useful at the time of purchase but haven’t turned out to be so).

The books I’ll be keeping for certain are some favorites that have my handwritten notes in them, some out-of-print cultural studies books that I bought used at Powell’s, and my collection of a few dozen books on Islam (some of them are pretty hard to get from foreign publishers that don’t even exist anymore).

Still, I look forward to paring down!