Not long after the fire I read
an article about clutter. It suggests that if you haven’t used something for a
year, you might consider getting rid of it. I look at my library of books and
start to wonder. I estimate that I might read about ten per cent of my books a
second time. The rest are furniture.
I’ve heard vaguely of ‘liberated’
books, left by the reader where they can be found and read by others. I
consider leaving one at a time on the Bendigo train after each journey, at the
fish and chip shop, on people’s desks at work, wherever a book can be left and
discovered. Instead I resolve to give them to friends by whim.
I give 83 of the best books I
won’t read again to my good woman’s daughter, classics, one-off rippers, deep
and meaningful gems. She is delighted. Batches of six go to my dog-sitter Julie
who likes my taste in literature and laughs at anything I utter.
In 1978 I sell hundreds of
books in an uncluttering fury before moving interstate. I regret it. But in
2009 I begin again lightening the load on my bookshelves. I pack six boxes.
Five go to Book Now, my favourite second-hand bookshop in Bendigo. They
cherry-pick about one book in five, give me $160. Most return and sit in my
passageway. Later I donate them to a charity book swap program.
I still have hundreds of books on my shelves,
my ‘professional’ library on words and language, reference books, the ten
percenters I might read again, those I haven’t read yet. The fiction is gone.
I love books, the aesthetic,
the feel and smell of books. A new book is still a thing of wonder. I love them
for the ideas they contain, the characters and the stories. I love books set in
places I’ll never get to: Newfoundland (The
shipping news), Puget Sound (Snow
falling on cedars), rural France in the 1860s (Zola’s Earth).
Books rock.
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