66 books on the route to neater shelves
Book Purge Twenty-two — November 20th 2016
Solidly into duplicate territory now, at least as far as Penguin Modern Classics go. I would dearly love to have a wall full of Penguin Classics, Penguin Modern Classics, and Penguin English Library volumes, even with duplicates included but, alas, there is no space. The Lowry, the Lawrence, the Sartre, the Hamsun, the Euripides, and the Mann have identical twins on the shelf already.
Not only do I have pretentious shelves, therefore, I double down on pretentiousness by having duplicates. So at least I’m removing one layer of the pretentious during this process.
I went through an Eric Ambler phase, for which I am grateful. It is a phase I won’t need to relive, so the Ambler books I have to hand this week can join the purge.
Neal Stephenson, much as I love many of his books, bored me in Anathem. It can go.
I’m really struggling to find more books to add to the purge pile and my shelves will still be overloaded. The rules of this purge — my own rules, admittedly — state that I can’t have books in front of books on the shelves. The time is coming soon when I need to apply even stricter criteria for the stay or go question.
I am not looking forward to that.
In addition to this week’s duplicates, I’ve moved into removing books by authors that I once loved, such as Martin Amis. I will probably keep a few of his books — The Rachel Papers and Money, for sure — but there are some I won’t look at again. The Pregnant Widow is one of them. William Boyd helped keep me sane through my years in Singapore when I read everything from A Good Man In Africa through to Brazzaville Beach. My wife read them and loved them, too.
Again, there will be books of his I keep — probably Good Man and The Ice Cream War — but others that can now go.
Also in this second pile are the customary writing and sales books that speak to the twin aspects of my misguided career choices thus far.
Early in the week I wondered whether I would be able to reach 20 books, never mind 66. But a little lowering of standards — or perhaps raising of standards, really — meant a late rush (i.e. a furious scan of the piles of books yesterday) got me to a decent number. At the moment, I can’t see a similar number for next week unless I really change the criteria.
Looking at the shelves, I estimate I need to purge at least another 250 books before I can start to think the shelves look as if they belong to a reader instead of a hoarder, so there is hard work ahead still.
