I have a faux rule that for every book I buy I have to get rid of one already in the house. It's SO faux that I've never once followed it, and now there is absolutely no place to put the new books I continue to bring home. Reading on my Kindle has slowed the rate of space-hogging acquisitions, but I MUST own IN HARDBACK the new novels of Russo and Conroy, which will simply not fit on the tottering read-next stack of 3-for-2 paperbacks or in the special family bookcase of books-that-changed-our-lives or on the shelves of I-really-will-get-around-to-these-one-day virgins. Buried somewhere among the possible losers is the next story that will transport me to that reading nirvana where I actually can't go to sleep and will also move me to greater insight about another culture or the entire human race. Every book unread carries this potential, and every book already read and loved is like a snapshot of a moment in the past I can't part with.
So how am I going to downsize my library? Do I get rid of The Oxford Guide to the English Language that I haven't looked at since I retired from the classroom? How about the seven-volume set of The Williamsburg Novels, which I loved in adolescence but found I had outgrown when I tried them again last year? The coffee-table size books about Pittsburgh, our home town? The many volumes about birds, though we haven't gone birding or looked at the books in several years? The many books about how to write and how to get published? (There are so many--how can my novels still be in the closet?!) The poetry books, which are quite dusty, I'm ashamed to say? The novels I taught (and therefore read enough times to have memorized whole chapters), marred by annotations and highlighted passages I didn't want my skimming students to miss? The promo copies of children's books my grandson hasn't grown into yet?
They're all too precious. I'll just have to get rid of some furniture and build another bookshelf.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment