treasured books

I was recently reading about another family minimizing their household. They were letting everything go. Except, they said, for their "treasured books," which would be placed in a storage unit indefinitely.

Until last month, I would have referred to my books the same way. Treasured. Precious. I love books, and they remind me of studying theology in seminary, of reading Orwell and Tolstoy and Steinbeck in high school, of discovering Stephen King when I was just nine, and Joyce Carol Oates in my early twenties, being amazed that an actual flesh and blood human being could write so well.

We had several hundred books from various stages of life, and treasured all of them.

But at some point, I had to ask whether I kept all these books because I actually intended to read and re-read them, or because it allowed me to revisit these moments of literary fascination. Or to remind myself that I am, in fact, quite well read.

Or worse, to remind others.

The truth is that I did not plan to read most of them again. If I do, there are libraries. Kindles. Friends. Plenty of resources for securing and reading books. With this in mind, I let them go. Some we've sold. Others, we donated in a pretty spectacular way (see below).

The luxury of removing books from my home, in a world where many struggle for literacy, much less actually owning hundreds of books, that luxury is not lost on me. But it is an even greater luxury to have books, many books, and pack them into a storage unit for what might be years. That feels to me like the height of decadence. Academic, hipster-nerdery decadence.

41 books sold on half.com

I also donated 156 issues of Martha Stewart Living magazine and 30 issues of Ready Made. If you do the maths, it becomes apparent that this is over ten years of magazines, which I have carted around with me from California to Denver to California, and back again. I thought I might need them for reference, or because I just wanted to read through them again. That's crazy, right?

What is decidedly not crazy is what we're doing with all those books. Ron proposed the creation of a lending library at our local coffee shop. This morning, we dropped them off, along with a bookcase. The coffee shop is thrilled to have this new resource, and we're ecstatic--not an exaggeration; we were dancing around the house gathering books, and now so full of joy!--to leave a legacy for our community. Giving is good.

218 books donated to our local coffee shop

Total: 446

Total to date: 2003

2003! That's another thousand, then! Wow!