Separation anxiety kicks in as I send another 57 books out the door
Book Purge Nineteen — October 23rd 2016
Making choices is definitely becoming harder now. There are books in these photos that have moved from the keep pile to the purge pile only after much difficulty.
I now have the problem that, after bringing boxes of books down from the attic, I have more books in the office than can fit not only on the shelves but also on the floor. I struggle to get from the door to my desk. Putting them back in the attic is not an option.
This raises again the motives for doing this purge. Leaving aside the wish to make my wife happy, I have to wonder why I have so many books in the first place and why I have so many in the attic. It’s like having works of art locked away. These books need to see the light of day.
More than that, they need to be set free. I find I have sets of novels that I keep because I have read them. Even books I know I will never read again I keep. It’s obviously an ego thing.
And let’s face it; who cares? Who cares what I’ve read and who cares what books sit on the shelves in my office? Me. Only me.
And the me that collected all these books is not the same me that now needs to get rid of them.
So there are 57 books to go this week. This is an increase on last week but I need to do even more next week. And that’s a little scary because, as I said, I’m finding myself moving to the seriously reticent stage.
Obviously, there are books in these two photos that I wonder why I own them in the first place — The Alchemist, for instance — but there are those, too, which mean something. I just know that I won’t need or read the literary theory books again. And, to be honest, they were never more than skimmed, even when I was kidding myself that sort of stuff was important to me.
This is a challenging and yet rewarding experience. It is increasingly becoming an examination of who I once thought I was and who I am now.
Who would have thought that the simple exercise of purging books would carry such emotional weight?
