Breaking up is hard to do: on culling a book hoard
Do you throw out books? Let me hasten to say what I mean by "throw out" here: recycle, in the case of books that you've destroyed with aggressive reading (broken the spine, written indignant notes in the margins, etc.), or sell to a used book store, or palm off on your hapless friends/relatives/students, or give away to an appropriate hospital etc. etc. etc. So I guess my real question is this: are you a book hoarder -- someone who keeps forever the vast majority of the books she buys -- or a book selector -- someone who keeps some of her books but gets rid of a pretty good portion of them sooner or later? When you buy a book, is it marriage, or is it just a getting-to-know-you date?
I ask because I'm a natural book hoarder who is trying to become a book selector. My book-hoard had taken over my living space, and that wasn't working for me psychologically. I can't have my living space turn into a cave where I curl, Smaug-like, on top of my hoard of books, emerging only to kill sheep and destroy the occasional village. The fact is that while literature is my life and soul and being, I need space too -- need, as in a psychological need for light and air and a general sense of openness. More pragmatically, I need to be able to find the floor. I need to be able to find the cats. I need to be able to find my tax forms from 2003. In an apartment crowded top to bottom with books, vital records have a habit of disappearing, along with the cats, houseguests, and most of my flatware.
So book-culling has to happen once in a while. Unfortunately, I find culling to be about as easy as deciding which kitten to murder (no, I haven't ever done that, really: culling books is bad enough). See, a book-hoard is, yes, a problem. But you can't magically wave a wand and reduce your book-hoard by a third. (Well, I suppose you could hire someone to vandalize your apartment, but I haven't reached that stage of desperation yet.) No, you have to decide which books to cull ONE AT A TIME, and that means encountering each book in all its individual blamelessness -- for it's not the book's fault that it constitutes part of a hoard. You have to look the book in the eye (and yes, you'll find that books suddenly seem to develop eyes when you confront them in this way), and say: "sorry, you are just NOT GOOD ENOUGH to occupy my space, and no matter how much you pout, I am exiling you to bargain bin at a used bookstore."
Oh, the agony. How can you make this decision? It's true that some books are easy to cull -- the literary equivalent of really bad dates. You met the book at a bar, had a couple of drinks, and it became immediately obvious that you and it had about as much in common as Mother Teresa and Mussolini. So you part, the sooner the better, and you tell the friend who introduced you that she was clearly on crack and she is never, ever allowed to set you up with someone again, unless she's willing to provide you with a bodyguard.
Similarly, some books are easy to keep -- the literary equivalent of a flourishing marriage. These are the books you're likely to reread at least once every three or four years for the rest of your life. For me that covers Tolkien, Lewis, Jane Austen, Melville, P.G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and Proust (really, that last one isn't just there for intellectual respectability -- he's all about sex and snark and gossip and time and memory and gah, just trust me on this one).
So, some decisions are easy. But then there are the books that are neither nightmare dates nor literary spouses. There are the books you read once and kind of enjoyed, but will most likely never read again. There are the books you started to read but didn't finish. There are the books you intend to read but, erm, haven't, and that sit on the shelf, year after year, waiting to be read.
Which to keep? Which to cull? For me asking this question makes me wonder why we keep books in the first place. The librarians among you are probably already composing replies in your head asking why in God's name I buy books at all if my book-hoard is such a problem. Why not just borrow them? I guess the answer to that question is this: owning a book, I think, is quite different from just reading it. This will sound a bit weird, but for me a book is more than an orderly little pile of paper. It represents, in material form, the thought of another person. When you own a book, you are sharing your space with an object that continually represents to you that thought. Owning a book is, well, a little commitment to the book's contents. It's a commitment both to another person -- the author -- and in some ways to yourself. Owning a book says: yes, this living structure of thought is important to me. With the author, I thought these thoughts, I dreamed these dreams. Or I did once. Or I might in the future.
Sometimes I WANT to make that commitment -- which is why I buy books. But over time the number of those commitments can start to get overwhelming. Sometimes your tastes change, and a commitment that seemed enormously meaningful for a while fades as time passes. In that case, what are you really keeping when you keep a book? Ghosts of your earlier self? A false sense of changelessness in a world of change? Is that something you really want in your space?
It could be that someday all these questions will seem even sillier than they do now. We'll all be reading books digitally, and we'll be able to store the contents of a university library in a digital reading device no larger than a ham sandwich. To some extent those digital choices are already available -- I'd say at least half of my current hoard is available for free on Project Gutenberg. But I'm an old fogey who's not used to that. Digital books have zero emotional resonance for me -- it's precisely because they don't take up space that I don't read them. You can't LIVE with digital books the same way you can with real ones. My study is set up so that I can see my Tolkien collection from where I sit, and that means something to me. In the painfully clutter-free future, we'll have our space, no doubt, but no sense of books as commitment, no brilliance and foolishness and snark and laughter and glorious worlds of story whispering continually from our walls. I want my space. But maybe not quite that much of it?
So. *Turns to task she is procrastinating about by writing this post*. That four-volume biography of Shaw. That cluster of mysteries by Iain Pears. Keep or cut?
I ask because I'm a natural book hoarder who is trying to become a book selector. My book-hoard had taken over my living space, and that wasn't working for me psychologically. I can't have my living space turn into a cave where I curl, Smaug-like, on top of my hoard of books, emerging only to kill sheep and destroy the occasional village. The fact is that while literature is my life and soul and being, I need space too -- need, as in a psychological need for light and air and a general sense of openness. More pragmatically, I need to be able to find the floor. I need to be able to find the cats. I need to be able to find my tax forms from 2003. In an apartment crowded top to bottom with books, vital records have a habit of disappearing, along with the cats, houseguests, and most of my flatware.
So book-culling has to happen once in a while. Unfortunately, I find culling to be about as easy as deciding which kitten to murder (no, I haven't ever done that, really: culling books is bad enough). See, a book-hoard is, yes, a problem. But you can't magically wave a wand and reduce your book-hoard by a third. (Well, I suppose you could hire someone to vandalize your apartment, but I haven't reached that stage of desperation yet.) No, you have to decide which books to cull ONE AT A TIME, and that means encountering each book in all its individual blamelessness -- for it's not the book's fault that it constitutes part of a hoard. You have to look the book in the eye (and yes, you'll find that books suddenly seem to develop eyes when you confront them in this way), and say: "sorry, you are just NOT GOOD ENOUGH to occupy my space, and no matter how much you pout, I am exiling you to bargain bin at a used bookstore."
Oh, the agony. How can you make this decision? It's true that some books are easy to cull -- the literary equivalent of really bad dates. You met the book at a bar, had a couple of drinks, and it became immediately obvious that you and it had about as much in common as Mother Teresa and Mussolini. So you part, the sooner the better, and you tell the friend who introduced you that she was clearly on crack and she is never, ever allowed to set you up with someone again, unless she's willing to provide you with a bodyguard.
Similarly, some books are easy to keep -- the literary equivalent of a flourishing marriage. These are the books you're likely to reread at least once every three or four years for the rest of your life. For me that covers Tolkien, Lewis, Jane Austen, Melville, P.G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and Proust (really, that last one isn't just there for intellectual respectability -- he's all about sex and snark and gossip and time and memory and gah, just trust me on this one).
So, some decisions are easy. But then there are the books that are neither nightmare dates nor literary spouses. There are the books you read once and kind of enjoyed, but will most likely never read again. There are the books you started to read but didn't finish. There are the books you intend to read but, erm, haven't, and that sit on the shelf, year after year, waiting to be read.
Which to keep? Which to cull? For me asking this question makes me wonder why we keep books in the first place. The librarians among you are probably already composing replies in your head asking why in God's name I buy books at all if my book-hoard is such a problem. Why not just borrow them? I guess the answer to that question is this: owning a book, I think, is quite different from just reading it. This will sound a bit weird, but for me a book is more than an orderly little pile of paper. It represents, in material form, the thought of another person. When you own a book, you are sharing your space with an object that continually represents to you that thought. Owning a book is, well, a little commitment to the book's contents. It's a commitment both to another person -- the author -- and in some ways to yourself. Owning a book says: yes, this living structure of thought is important to me. With the author, I thought these thoughts, I dreamed these dreams. Or I did once. Or I might in the future.
Sometimes I WANT to make that commitment -- which is why I buy books. But over time the number of those commitments can start to get overwhelming. Sometimes your tastes change, and a commitment that seemed enormously meaningful for a while fades as time passes. In that case, what are you really keeping when you keep a book? Ghosts of your earlier self? A false sense of changelessness in a world of change? Is that something you really want in your space?
It could be that someday all these questions will seem even sillier than they do now. We'll all be reading books digitally, and we'll be able to store the contents of a university library in a digital reading device no larger than a ham sandwich. To some extent those digital choices are already available -- I'd say at least half of my current hoard is available for free on Project Gutenberg. But I'm an old fogey who's not used to that. Digital books have zero emotional resonance for me -- it's precisely because they don't take up space that I don't read them. You can't LIVE with digital books the same way you can with real ones. My study is set up so that I can see my Tolkien collection from where I sit, and that means something to me. In the painfully clutter-free future, we'll have our space, no doubt, but no sense of books as commitment, no brilliance and foolishness and snark and laughter and glorious worlds of story whispering continually from our walls. I want my space. But maybe not quite that much of it?
So. *Turns to task she is procrastinating about by writing this post*. That four-volume biography of Shaw. That cluster of mysteries by Iain Pears. Keep or cut?