Mar 29
Cleaning out the books to make room for new ones
Cats: CBC Radio, cottage|Cleaning out bookshelves this past week.
The idea is that good books should not be condemned to a life of dust collecting on my bookshelves.
Also that bookshelves should be dynamic places, with room made for new books, new authors, new ideas.
But what to keep? What to donate?
Woolf? G Greene, Nietzsche, Sontag, Joseph Campbell, 19th century novels, travel lit.
Asterix? – no, Asterix stays, ditto Wodehouse & JK Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat – the funniest book every written (IMHO).
What is your criteria for keeping vs. letting go?
March 29th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
That’s a tough call. In my nomadic ways, I’ve started giving away my books to friends because I can’t take them with me. But when I did have the space I’d usually keep something if it was something I keep going back too. Other’s I’m holding onto out of spite, just because I made it through, like Don Quixote.
March 29th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
I keep the ones that had some kind of positive impact on my life, so I can lend them to people who appear to need that.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:35 am
got any good smut that I can read on the beach ndext month?
March 31st, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Allison, it’s a tough one – you get attached, but it’s not the physical thing, but rather the ideas – you can always get the book again at the library
Dick, in your nomadic existence? Do you carry them around with you or pay tohave them stored in boxes? Seems a shame to store books in boxes
Nanc, a few thrillers you might like
April 1st, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I have pretty much stopped buying books, in favour of taking them out of the library. That said, I do have a few overflowing baskets in my bedroom that I am trying hard to ignore.
April 1st, 2010 at 4:51 pm
The books are in the box in the trailer…somewhat like an idea buried in the subconscious, they will eventually come to the light.