As we inch closer to moving house after 11 years (far and away my longest stay anywhere) the problem of The Books raises itself.
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We have *something* like 2000 of them – it ebbs and flows (mostly flows). Every few years I might try for a ‘purge’. The hardest of these maybe pruned 300. My current pre-moving effort has reached ~60 so far…
Most of this comes from non-fiction, which in our house almost exclusively reflects the variously fast and slow shifts of my own obsessions, as Mrs Hat Only Reads Fiction. And we never know how to tackle fiction and literature.
Which raises the question: why do we keep books? So often they bulkily reflect moments of our own mental history or phases of life. Sometimes there’s a sense of having a suitably broad and interesting ‘library’. (For whom? Imagined critics of our lives?)
Sometimes we naively imagine the kids might follow our footsteps (two English degrees), or at least be bibliophiles (they are certainly avid readers… but that’s not the same, is it..?). Sometimes books just look nice.
We have *something* like 2000 of them – it ebbs and flows (mostly flows). Every few years I might try for a ‘purge’. The hardest of these maybe pruned 300. My current pre-moving effort has reached ~60 so far…
Most of this comes from non-fiction, which in our house almost exclusively reflects the variously fast and slow shifts of my own obsessions, as Mrs Hat Only Reads Fiction. And we never know how to tackle fiction and literature.
Which raises the question: why do we keep books? So often they bulkily reflect moments of our own mental history or phases of life. Sometimes there’s a sense of having a suitably broad and interesting ‘library’. (For whom? Imagined critics of our lives?)
Sometimes we naively imagine the kids might follow our footsteps (two English degrees), or at least be bibliophiles (they are certainly avid readers… but that’s not the same, is it..?). Sometimes books just look nice.
But boy, do they take up space.