I just got a (free) Kindle. So I can borrow one book each month from Amazon Prime for free.
I can also borrow pretty much anything for my Kindle from our library system whenever I want. From home or abroad, I can download it instantly and it expires when it’s “due”, so it can’t ever be returned late.
And if it’s not on the Kindle, I can get it from the library! The library is only a couple miles from our house. It’s huge and lovely, and basically has everything.
So I don’t need books anymore, right?
But I do. Some of them because the copy itself is meaningful to me (it’s signed by the author, I was reading it when I decided to make some huge life change, it’s been to 40+ countries with me). Some of them because I look things up in them shockingly often. Some because I want to have a copy available to lend when someone needs them. And some because they’re annotated in a helpful way.
But all that together probably only makes one shelf of books. So why, for example, am I keeping Freakonomics? I love that book. I’ve read it 4 or 5 times. I’ve assigned papers about it. But do I need to own it?
If I’m honest, it’s because I don’t want to be the kind of person who doesn’t own Freakonomics. Because I’m not ready to be someone who doesn’t have books in their house. I like the way they look. I like seeing the titles and thinking about reading them or having read them. And, I’ll admit, I like the picture of my interests that they tell when they’re looked at together, by me or anyone else. It’s like the perfect version of myself.
In past years I’ve made peace with donating books that I had bought (my normal book price is 25 cents or lower) but hadn’t yet read if they’d been moved more than once. And I’m rather good at getting rid of books that I read and didn’t particularly love.
This week we are moving, and every time we move I try to get rid of anything that it’s silly to keep. This time, two huge boxes of books made the cut. And trust me, there have been lots of cuts before. But do I need Black’s Law Dictionary? I like how it looks on the shelf. But I do not need it.
I kept a lot of things I don’t need. I don’t need The Color Purple. I don’t need Their Eyes were Watching God. I don’t need The Good Society. And I certainly don’t need 50 different versions of Alice in Wonderland. But I kept all those.
So one box of books is going to the Prison Books Program, and I’m really happy about that. And one box is getting sold back to Amazon — sure, it’s only for $20, but those add up. And one box is getting donated to the library, so that someone else can find a book for 25 cents and move it obsessively around the country until, one day, they too decide that they don’t really need it. Because books are more transient than we think.
Do you keep books just because of the way their presence looks or makes you feel? Or are the rest of you way more organized than me?
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I definitely keep all my books. I’ve only ever given away 2 books because I didn’t like them. For me, there’s something really important about the physical process of reading a book. And that can’t be recreated with an e-reader. I have a nook, which is so great for so many things. But when I want to really enjoy a book, I want a tangible copy that I can parse through. I also read like a crazy person, meaning, I sort of scan though passages, and then go back and decide what’s the most important stuff to read slowly. So I’m constantly flipping around and going back to things. I’ve tried this on an e-reader and it’s a huge pain. I also love to go back to my books and re-read them, or at least passages in them. I think it will be sad day if books aren’t physically published anymore. What happens if someone wipes out all the electronic data? Farenheit 451, future-style.
Yeah but I feel like I can get the hard copy versions at the library, which I do. So I don’t know that I need to like own my very own. I think the Kindle will not work for everything, like you said. But I also don’t know if I’m keeping most of my books just out of vanity, and it would be better to let them move on to new homes.
I like the idea of owning them and not having to return them to the library. I figure, if I really like them and plan on reading them again, why not keep them around. Plus, I do like how they all look together. And there’s something nice about having all your work displayed. I guess they are my trophies.
Yeah I fall into that trophy thing too. I feel like if I’ll read it 20 more times or look something up in it once a year, keep it. If I might read it again in 10 years? I’m moving like 50 times before then. Too hard. But more than half the time I read something and think “that was fine”, and that’s when I just immediately get rid of it. It could be because I get so many books for free that they aren’t really the best ones to have chosen, which makes me more likely to part with them.
I don’t know how you do it! I moved to NYC a year and a half ago and had to box up all my books because they wouldn’t fit in our shoebox of an apartment – that was about 4 small U-Haul boxes (and those were just books we had at our apartment…not to mention all the books at my parents’ house). Now we’re moving again, and somehow in the year and a half I’ve been here, I’ve managed to accumulate 4 more small U-Haul boxes full of books. The hardest part for me when moving is deciding which books actually get to come with me and which ones get left behind!
I don’t like getting rid of them, but I like it better when they’re going somewhere where they’ll get a lot of use. Most of my law books are headed to the Prison Book Program, and that feels good because I know they’ll be needed and used there.
I think the reason I can sometimes purge a few boxes of books is exactly the reason you described – they always come back. Without meaning to, I seem to acquire way more books than I can or will actually read. Plus I only read about 2 books/month, so I’d like them to be the ones I chose instead of the ones that chose me. And I also think when you move 4+ times/year, you have to REALLY want things to move them.
I have the same attachment to books, but I finally decided to get rid of most of them. It was actually kind of painful. Both of us were English majors, so we had all those anthologies nobody wants to read again; but mostly they were books that I felt like defined who I was and am to anyone who saw them.
I had to let them go. I’ve kept hard cover books that were gifts or that are hard to find and several academic books that my husband needs, but that’s it. It really sucked.
I got rid of Freakonomics, and that sucked too.
You know I once took the Norton Anthology of American Literature on a backpacking trip to Nicaragua. It packs in a lot of reading/pound. Plus you can rip the things out that you don’t want to read and throw them in the sea!
What helps is to go to the library, look around, and see that THAT is your bookshelf now. Fantastico!
I am frugal, but I will not give up books or clothes b/c I get a lot of enjoyment from both. I don’t like having a lot of clutter around me but I don’t consider books clutter, either. I do have a Kindle (gifted to me) which I like a lot but I also have two bookshelves full of books and have no intention of stopping!
I definitely don’t consider books clutter, but I think you’re right on the money: if you get enjoyment from having ‘em, keep ‘em! I get a lot of enjoyment from reading. The having? Not so much. And some of them were just overly ambitious – am I ever going to finish reading 500 pages of essays on the various American presidents? Probably not.