Too many books?
Some of the remaining books on the giveaway table. Photo: Ellen Rocco
About a month ago I tackled my home library, filling about 20 boxes with books that ranged from college textbooks to almost-complete collections of detective series to duplicate (and even triplicate) copies of classics to piles and piles of random titles that I know I will never look at again.
I still read books, the three-dimensional rather than electronic kind. Nonetheless, I have come to a point in my life where I only keep classics or books that I actually may want to re-read (though this is mostly wishful thinking).
I gave books to two libraries, and then emptied the remaining boxes onto our station “giveaway” table. Remarkably, almost all of the hundreds of volumes have moved out of our hallway into other peoples’ collections. When I acquire a new book and finish reading it, if I liked it, I pass it along to my son or a friend. If I didn’t much like it (which probably means I only made it 50 pages in), I put it on the giveaway table.
People seem to have one of two reactions to my book purging. Either they say, “Oh, that’s exactly what I have to do. I wish I could find the time to pare down my library.”
Or, I get what I call the “deer in the headlights” reaction. Take yesterday. I was on the air with two good friends–both serious readers and book lovers, Chris Robinson and John Ernst. They had noticed the giveaway table piled with books. I explained that I had cleared out about 3/4 of my home library.
Panic.
I compare this reaction to the look guys get when you tell them you’re taking the male dog to the vet to get “fixed.” It’s not that it’s their books being given away, but even the thought of anyone’s books leaving a library elicits deep feelings of fear and empathetic loss.
My office bookshelves. Hmm…time to get the boxes? Photo: Ellen Rocco
Both admitted they still have all of their college textbooks. C’mon, guys, the map of Eastern Europe and the governments of South American countries aren’t even remotely close to what’s in those political science books. String theory hadn’t even been imagined way back when you bought your math and physics texts. And, I’m going to bet that the four-inch thick paperback Norton Anthology of American (and/or British) Literature is falling apart and the print is so small even your strongest reading glasses can’t help you decipher the text.
Dale Hobson, our web manager and resident poet, is like me. He prefers to read paper books, but uses an electronic reader occasionally. More importantly, as he pointed out, with the advent of digital books one can always access a volume that might have been given away or passed along to a friend. It’s not like you have to go out and spend a lot of money to get a copy of Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox to re-read on the 60th anniversary of its winning a Pulitzer. It’s there online even in the middle of the night.
I am not so hardened that I throw away books (unless one is badly damaged or missing pages). And, I never ever burn a book. Images of book burnings in Nazi Germany evoke such personal horror and repugnance–reinforced by my reading of Fahrenheit 450 decades ago (I gave away my copy)–that I simply cannot set match to book pages.
I admit I had to accumulate a pile of boxes and screw up my courage before I waded into my library and started pulling volumes off the shelf. But once started, it got easier and easier and I made myself feel better as I thought about other people actually opening and reading books that had simply been collecting dust for decades. Plus, there’s lots of room now for, well, more books.
When I first saw this I felt shivers running down my spine Cull books? Never. I might have to build a new wing on my house, but books are sacred!
After I read Ellen’s thoughts, I have to say she makes a lot of sense. Someone is going to have to sort those books and even my children might not handle them as gently as I. Can “outsiders” add to your giveaway table?
I agree that Ellen’s answer here is rational, graceful, honest — but no. I can’t do it. Not yet, maybe never.
I am a huge believer that objects of beauty should occupy physical space. I don’t want all of my music on one I-pod. I WANT a wall full of CDs that I can browse and be surprised by and coexist with.
I want books around me in the same way that I want beautiful photographs and paintings around me, even if I will never read them again. (Though I get great pleasure from dipping into old books that I read long ago.)
I detest clutter, except when it comes to ideas and interesting things. A wall of bric-a-brac would creep me out. A wall of books delights my eye.
I have inherited many of grandfather and mother’s books, and so I have built on their collections, but my son is not a great reader, nor a great admirer of books as objects.
So I thoroughly expect that my books will dissolve and vanish, and given the trends of our society, in most cases be lost or destroyed.
This is weird, but I think of the dissipation of my books as something like the dissipation of myself. We will go together someday and be retained, if at all, in tiny fragments.
A final note: I checked out the new Northshire books in Saratoga Springs today. Pretty great. Why is it that some books stores are jammed with people, when so many others can’t make a go of it?
–Brian
I just moved and I’m faced now with downsizing. A lot of junk is being gone through, but the hardest to cull is my library (I have Norton’s Anthology also). How do you pass on an Art book? What about books that belonged to my grandfather? Here’s a complication… vinyl LPs… hundreds! 78 rpm’s that belonged to my mom… Billy Holliday, Duke, Count Basie. It’s making me sick!
That’s why I almost always get books from the library these days. In addition to books I have accumulated, I have old books of my parents and many of my daughter’s books (she lives in a small apartment in a big city and has no room for them). It will be a big problem when I downsize.
I have culled books before but I still have books in boxes that are “reference” books because they are my interests, Americana, boats, certain regional geographics of places I would like to visit. Even as I put them away in the attic, they eventually re-fill the upstairs book case which I downsized because it was making the floor sag. It is back to 3/4 full, in some cases two books deep and I need to clean it again. Yes there are some college texts and that anthology out in the barn but the upstairs collection is a working library. they are drawn off the shelf an looked at once a year or more. There is also the hope the kids would walk by and look at on once in awhile as I did as a child in our living room and read of 14th century battles in the deserts of the middle east or something from national geographic or The Pennsylvania Kentucky Rifle.
As the cartoon on our refrigerator says, books take you places when you can go nowhere.
“Too many books in a house”? That is about as incomprehensible a phrase as “too much garlic in a dish.”
Pat: Yes, anyone can leave books and other items (like cds or lps) on our giveaway table, within reason!
Brian Mann: You’re just not quite old enough yet to feel the pressure of deconstructing the acquisitive years, no matter books or chotchkes. It’ll come…
Brian (MOFYC): I agree about the garlic.
Jeff: Yeah, for many years I just kept adding to my library with the rationale that my son and his friends would soak up something through proximity to books. To some extent, I think this is very true. (I’m remembering a night I ventured into my 14-year old son’s room and he had a volume of Cervantes, in Spanish, open on his chest along with an English-Spanish dictionary.) But, my son left home at the age of 16 to go to college and has spent just short stretches of time at home in the 12 years since. I do still pass books along to him on a regular basis–something my mother did for me and I much appreciated as a young adult.
With this, as so much else, I say let it go. The great books will always be available if you need to dive deep. The shallow books don’t offer very much after one or two passes, so why keep them? I enjoy being able to reach for Emily Dickinson or Joseph Conrad, but other than that… I borrow it* on my kindle and am pleased that I don’t have to worry about returning it.
*A New York Public Library card is available to all NYS residents and is a wonderful resource. They have many, many books in kindle or audio format. The only catch is that you must bring your card to a NYPL branch at least one time to be validated. If you think you’ll be in the New York city area in the near future it’s worth signing up.
I’m like Brian- this makes so much sense, and there are easy culls that bring no pain- but there are books that surprise me- that I liked but didn’t “get” years ago- and I don’t feel too sorry for my children having to go through them- many of the books are theirs, and they love coming and checking some out. What I don’t want, my husband does. what he doesn’t want, one of the kids do..
Yeah to libraries and inter-library loans. Couldn’t live without them.
wanted to add this- we gave all our encyclopedias and textbooks- college, etc. our kids had a LOT- to the Amish and Mennonite schools. They accepted them, and appeared excited. So any reference books might be welcome- although I’m sure they would gone over to check for agendas- perspective, etc.