Out goes he

[callmemadam]

Someone else on my Flist has been extolling the joys of decluttering and I agree that it is very satisfying. When you’ve lived in a big house for a long time and downsizing looms, there’s an awful lot of stuff to be got rid of and one feels less overwhelmed by it all if a box is got rid of every now and then.

One thing I do every year and more than once is to dispose of hundreds of books. I know this will cause raised eyebrows amongst people happy to live with tottering piles but, see above, I don’t like to feel out of control and I buy more books than I can keep. I’ve been going through the shelves in the hall and am rather shocked by what is a keeper and what a goer. IN stay Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones. OUT go Dostoievsky, Gogol and Turgenev. Admittedly, these are old Penguin Classics with browning pages and small print (print is getting smaller, I swear) but something puritan in me says this must be wrong.

But why? What are books for? Classics will always be available. I think the slightly guilty feeling comes from the idea that one ought to have a library and that means a range of reference books and of the great classics. OK, I’m certainly never parting with Jane Austen, George Eliot or Dickens because who knows when I might just have to read them and NOW. Do I need to keep Greek classic plays and the great Russians (I’m excepting Tolstoy, who stays) in case I want to check something? Or to impress visitors? Huh: the only thing visitors to our house ever want to look at is the juke box. I turned out huge numbers of history books years ago on the grounds that they were out of date and never looked at, but I still felt uneasy about it. I do still have a copy of the Penguin History Tudor England by S T Bindoff. It has my name inside, with ‘VI 1 Arts 11’ and I have a strange sentimental attachment to it.

So the boot of the car fills up regularly with neatly tied up carrier bags full of books for the Oxfam book bank. No doubt a number will be dumped but somebody, somewhere may be pleased to find others. I hope so.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It's not clear from this how much you reread?

I get rid of everything that I know I won't read again, unless it is a reference book (or Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf, to which I have a similar sentimental attachment).

But I get this wrong a lot, because I never know what I'm going to want to reread. I find myself replacing books I used to own, which is a pain. This was okay-ish when I was working, but it isn't really okay now.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I reread quite a lot but as you say, you can be wrong about what you think you won't read again. You sound strikt! I have a friend who reads a lot but never reads the same book twice because 'it's a waste of time'.

[(Anonymous)]

I am both strikt and tall.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Me, sorry.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

There are some books I want to re-read and some, I admit, that I keep because they look nice. Not for impressing other people, more for getting down and petting from time to time.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Nice packaging is a snare and a delusion but I know what you mean. A while ago I got rid of a whole lot of children's books I was only keeping because thay had such lovely dustwrappers.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

we still seem to have more books than space...

It was ever thus. My gardening books have been massively pruned (ha ha) but I had to get a dealer in to buy some.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It's a difficult row to hoe.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

Having moved twice in the last 4 years I have done some fairly ruthless de-cluttering and hope I won't rue the day. But I can't quite bring myself to dispose of books that I don't like which feel like part of a collection - things like the late Chalets (really I don't reread anything from Feud onwards, except Reunion) and the Abbey retrospectives.

And I am trying to be better about using the library for things I don't feel I positively must own. Unfortunately these days I am very bad at taking them back on time, and I occasionally feel it would have been cheaper to buy an Oxfam copy.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I have that same problem with Chalets and Abbeys. Also the duplicates problem. Sometimes I think it would be better to keep all the paperback Chalets as a set and at other times I think I'll only keep hardbacks and ditch the paperbacks I never read. The war ones are my favourites and I do like to have them in original, wartime editions.

[gghost.livejournal.com]

As I am officially out of shelf space, I don't keep any books than I don't absolutely love. At the moment, there are two full bags in our garage ready to be donated to the local library.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

ready to be donated to the local library.

Good for you. Unfortunately, our libraries are more likely to be getting rid of books than accepting them, or even closing down, so charity shops are the only option.