Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is - Book Purge in Real Time

 A few months ago, I wrote about how to manage your books and create a personal, curated library instead of having a bunch of books you both want and want to get rid of. Well, this week, I had the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. Because this week I did a mini-book purge, and had to contend with figuring out what books to keep and which to get rid of.

As I get closer to the 1000 book-mark for my personal library, and haven’t been moving apartments in 4 years, I’ve been trying to do little book purges as necessary. I don’t want to hit that kind of milestone just to then get rid of another 50 books and have to build back up to it again.

Unfortunately, even though I’ve done at least half a dozen book purges in the past, this one was particularly rough, because all of the books on the chopping block were just on the edge of keeping and not keeping.

Step one was easy enough. I went through all of my bookcases and pulled out every book I wasn’t convinced I needed to keep. No matter the book, if I thought “eh, do I really want/need to keep this?” I pulled it out and stuck it on my table. At the end of that process I had 31 books sitting there, ready to be judged if I really wanted to keep it or not.

This is where the hard part came in. When I know I don’t want a book, I just get rid of it then and there. I already had a pile of books in my closet that were certain “nos.” But the maybes are tough. How do you draw the line?

For me, personally, the hardest were literary classics or otherwise well regarded novels that I didn’t really want, but because of their pedigree I felt like I should keep. Should, as I’ve mentioned before, is an unhelpful and insidious word and it’s difficult to avoid its creeping tendrils.

So what to do when the should monster rears its head mid-project? Get a second opinion. It could be a friend, partner, or parent, but talking things through in real time really helps. For me, I called my mom and her advice was excellent.

Get Rid of What You Don’t Like, Regardless of Pedigree

This was where I struggled the most. There are a number of books I’ve read that are highly regarded, that I really disliked upon reading. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov might be one of the classic novels of the 20th century but it is also a disturbing novel about a man justifying repeated statutory rape of his step-daughter. It is messed up. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy won the Booker Award, but her prose style drove me nuts when I read it. When I talked to my mom about this, her response was to get rid of anything I knew I didn’t like. Pedigree, at the end of the day, doesn’t matter, and if it does to you as a person (like it does to me), you’ve already hit that mark by having read it in the first place.

Keep What You Might Read

This was another area I had issues with, but I think my mom was right. Unless you are hurting for room, which you might be, there is no reason to get rid of books that you probably, or even might read, in the future. If there is no chance of reading it, then by all means get rid of it, but since one of these days I might actually read Paradise Lost, there is no reason to get rid of it. Very few of us have read all the books in our libraries, and we always need something new to read at the drop of a hat. So, if you might read it and aren’t pressed for shelf space, may as well keep it.

You Cannot Foretell the Future

This is more of a general life advice, especially for risk-adverse people like me.  There is no way of knowing if you will regret getting rid of that book in 10 years. Or will end up rebuying it. You might. You might not. Life is unpredictable. And invariably, what you think is going to happen and what does are going to be, at best slightly different. There is no reason to hold yourself to an impossible standard that there are no regrets or problems ever. It will happen, and you will get through it.

No system is perfect, as much as I wish I could create one. Curating a library is no different. There will be problems and books you regret getting rid of. This is life. That’s not to say it doesn’t cause consternation. It’s hard. No matter what level of attachment one had to their library, winnowing down, especially with the maybe isn’t easy. But it is doable. Out of the 31 maybes I pulled out, I go rid of 10 of them – almost 13 but I liked the first book of a trilogy enough to keep the whole thing. And if I can do it, so can you.