, a well written fairy tale by Stephen King; I'll review it later today.I also finished taking my weeded out books to the used bookstore, finally. I have taken books there two and three times a week for several weeks now, and have weeded my library down to, if not a tenth, then certainly a twentieth of it's former glory. Thousands of books have left. I've received so many hundreds of dollars in trade you fellow bibliophiles would be sick if you knew the amount, and about half those hundreds in cash that came in very handy for various things. I still have a few boxes that need to be donated: old well worn copies or library rejects that the bookstore won't take. I've been taking a crate or two of those with me as I go, and putting them in the "free books" bin as well. The longer they sit in the house, the more tempted I am. I've pulled out a few, replaced a few, pulled out a few more.
We have to downsize. It's of the utmost importance on so many levels, and it's not just books that are being purged. Books are just the hardest to let go of for me.
I (and my husband too) tended to collect books as much for the fact that they were books as for the chance that I might eventually read them. The books I purged were books that had been in my home at least two years and that I had never made the slightest move toward reading. Thousands.
Yes, I purged a lot that I had already read and knew that I wouldn't be in danger of suddenly wanting to reread and not having, or classics that I can get for free from Project Gutenberg or on my Kindle. That was how I started.
But so many were collected just because I collected. Because books are my "thing". Because I love the way a book looks, the dust jacket, the pages, the font, the illustrations.
Oh it has been hard. Sometimes painful. But freeing too. When I took those first boxes, when I realized that I didn't have to actually own the book to still love it, when I realized that I was actually sharing my love of books with others this way, it was as if walls came down.
We still have hundreds, and always will. As long as I have enough walls for shelves, there will be books, but in moderation now. I'll keep the gems, the special ones, the comfort-food books--the wheat of my books, if you will--and I'll let the chaff go. I don't have to actually own a book to love it. I can share it with someone else, and have only the memory of it, and that's just a good. It's been an amazing lesson.
~the Sunday Salon~
