Mooncalf wrote a blog post today which hit home. “I have looked through my books,” she wrote, “and I need to get rid of some of them.”
Almost four years ago I uprooted myself from Denmark. I packed twenty-four boxes and my suitcase, and I moved across the North Sea. I moved from my own two-bedroom flat to a flat I shared with others. Most of my belongings languished in unopened boxes until Other Half and I found the apartment where we now live. Twenty-four boxes. Fifteen of the boxes were filled with books.
In my Copenhagen flat I had a wall of bookshelves and the bookshelves were packed. I had books stacked on the window sills, on top of chairs and, yes, on the floor. I had books in the attic too. In other words, I had to choose between my books: which ones were important enough to go on that journey with me; which ones could be replaced; which ones were unimportant enough to simply be given away?
I bought small stickers and started sorting my library.
Green sticker: you will come with me, you are part of me, we will never part. Yellow sticker: I need to think about us; it is complicated; will I find you again in a dusty secondhand bookshop? Red sticker: sorry but we are over; it’s not you it is me; you are replaceable; what was I thinking?
I left eighty per cent of my books behind me when I moved.
Regrets? I have a few, and not too few to mention. I gave away books I never thought I would read or re-read and now I often find myself running my finger along the spines looking for that Angela Carter novel I once began but never finished. There are huge gaps where Henry James and Charles Dickens used to reside. I really regret getting rid of my literary theory course books because I had some fabulous marginal notes and now that my brain is wasting away, I would love to curl up with Plato and those marginal notes.
And do not get me started on why I brought a standard paperback edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses with me, but got rid of all those Georgette Heyers I have had to re-purchase. Self-delusion, I think.
Nowadays my library has mingled with Other Half’s. We have a lot of Iain Banks, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson where once I had very few or none. We are running out of shelf-space once more (I have a cunning plan called “two-books-deep shelving”) and I despair at Other Half’s tendency to not put books back where they belong (I try to keep our fiction books alphabetised by author and under each author by date of publication).
And I feel haunted by books past because when I am standing in front of the bookshelves, I keep looking for the books that got away.
Which Angela Carter novel was it? I think it may have ended up at my place.
Nights at the Circus, I think. It’s okay. I could just go out & buy it. I should, actually.
Would it make you feel better about Georgette Heyer if you could get 10 for £9.99?
http://tinyurl.com/28osucs
What is bothering me more than the crap I’ve kept is the stuff I thought I had that isn’t here. How can I not have the Power and The Glory? I’ve bought it at least five times!
How timely is this post! I am in the process of preparing for a move, and in contemplation of which books stay and which go. I do small scales of this fairly often, but only once have I gotten rid of a large number of books, and now I still think back on the pain of that experience. For me books are all that is familiar and comforting and the thought of HAVING to get rid of some is very upsetting to me. I want to keep them all, even the ones I don’t want to read again, because I want talk about them with other people or lend them out or give them to someone. Ah books….
Your post definitely has resonance for me. When I moved to the UK I tried really hard to pack light, and only shipped over a few boxes (all books and yarn, of course). I’ve combined my two favourite purchases, and now have a fabulous collection of knitting books, mostly heavy and hardcover. I clearly won’t be able to move internationally again!
My parents’ system has four parts – unreads, his reads, her reads, and their reads, with each part alphabetised. It makes sense, but requires some amount of shelves..
Must be book posts week, as I posted too about our books. I’ve been in the process of destashing them for quite awhile…
it’s so hard to do and yet so important. I’ve cleared books about before, mainly before I went to England, not sure if I’d ever come back. I was rash. I could have thought it through. I can only hope the excellent second hand dealer I sold them to made good use of them.
I would love my books to be more ordered – your system is a good one I think, including date of publication!
DH had very little books when we met – our books are fighting for space on our shelves – He has all his Ian Banks , Douglas Copland , Neil Gaman and Christopher Brookmyre neatly shelved – mine are scrambled !
He is so ordered and neat it verges on the autistic spectrum, me on artistic messiness! Still, he reads good books now.
Mx