downsizing the library (or: why i'm a literary pirate)

Update: For a much smarter way to say some of the things I attempted below, see this post on Apartment Therapy.

I have a Masters in English. Throughout grad school, I called myself a "literary pirate."

Why? Specifically because in addition to the late works of Thomas Hardy, I truly appreciate the pleasure of young adult novels. Trashy ones, often times. I have read Twilight and although it is hardly well written, I appreciated it for what it was: a young adult romance full of misguided angst. (I didn't like the controlling hero or the heroine's self-definition through her love interest, but something about the crappy writing pulled me in and wouldn't let me go until it was all over.)

I have also worked in romance publishing. For a small, independent, mass-market publisher that couldn't hold on to good writers because it couldn't pay them what larger houses could. I have read a lot of mid-grade romance. And there are plenty of worse things I could have done for eight hours a day.

This could easily turn into a treatise about the values of popular fiction. I won't go there. Suffice it to say, I love to read and my tastes are not as discriminating as I once thought.

And I love books. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd even ponder buying an e-reader. I also never thought I'd see the day that I wouldn't by CDs, but that day has come and gone.

I love books, but I also love trees. And if trees don't have to die--or I don't have to be surrounded by dead trees--in order for me to read a book, I am all about that.  My expansive library had, in recent years, turned into a burden. It haunted me a little. I was already reeling from the fact that even after the purchase of a rather large bookcase a few years ago, I have no room for any more books. And then I went to grad school and had to buy probably 50 more. Husband has books from his parents' house and from grad school that live in boxes because we simply have no room for them.

And you know what's not happening to these books while they're littering my shelves and decorating my walls? They are not being read. And at the end of the day, a book is meant to be read. The majority of books are not decorative. The ones I have--mainly novels--are not coffee table books. They are gorgeous when they're all lined up, but that, in my opinion, is not their purpose. I'm a defender of literacy and someone who must have a book with her at almost all times. I read on the subway, I read in order to fall asleep, I read when I'm bored, I read for utmost pleasure. I can honestly say that, in my memory, there has never been a time when I wasn't reading a book. Meaning, there has never been a moment when you could ask me, "What are you reading?" and I wouldn't have an answer. I am always reading. I may have just started, I may be in the middle, or I may be desperate to get to the end, but I always have a book to go home to. But only read one book at a time. It's only physically possible to read one book at a time.

Ergo, I have hundreds too many.

I had to be vicious.  I had to be a pirate about it. I had to loot my library indiscriminately and box it up without thinking too hard about it. I would only keep things that met very specific criteria (favorite authors and books, gifts, anthologies, and things like Proust had to stay). I also did this when Husband was out, because he's not quite a literary pirate yet.

I packed until I ran out of boxes, and 175 books later we have significantly downsized our library. Husband came home, looked sad, forced me to babble something like I did two paragraphs ago, and then proceeded to unpack his boxes of books from other locations and pack a lot of them up as well.

I think the folks at the Salvation Army are getting a great deal. Since they're getting the better part of the library of a literary scholar (in pirate guise), these books are annotated. I took out about 6 Post-It pads worth of notes, flags, and other sticky items. Would I want to buy already-underlined and marked up books? No. But maybe someone else will, and they'll learn from my notes and underlining.

I also defiantly left my name in most of them. It's like writing your name on a dollar bill. Maybe I'll get it back one day.

Here are the results:

Note: These were full.

Not shown: three more boxes.

It's a disorganized mess, but the books are going to a better place, where they will ideally be sold to people who will read them and love them. There's Dickens and Austen in there, Flaubert and Turgenev, Bronte and Bridget Jones's Diary.

I'm already having thoughts--I kept a Christopher Rice novel to reread and now I want to reread all my Christopher Rice books--but I know I'll feel better when I have new, light shelves covered with meaningful artifacts from our travels and our life.

Salvation Army just needs to come now so I don't have any more time to think about it.

What about you? Does the mere idea of downsizing your library make you rock and suck your thumb? Or have you always had a carefully pared-down collection?

life detritus: downsizing and donating

Excited about the prospect of our new couch, Husband and I attacked the living room with gusto over the weekend.

And the hall closet. (Details forthcoming.)

The amount of unused belongings hanging around our apartment is a symptom of growing up in a house and having to adapt to the constraints of an apartment later in life. We grew up with basements, crawlspaces, and spare rooms. Now we don't even have a spare closet.

Added to the problem is the fact that I'm a bibliophile and Husband doesn't much like to throw anything out. (I'm not a huge fan either, to be honest. Ticket stubs from ferries taken on our honeymoon? Still have them. I use them as bookmarks!)

I once dreamed of having bookcases instead of walls. I almost got there in this apartment. We have about 22 feet of bookcases in our current apartment. This does not include the cookbook annex in the kitchen. Recently our crowded bookcases began to suffocate me. I am attempting to live as green a lifestyle as I can, and being surrounded by dead trees did not help my karma.

Problem: I studied literature in school (undergraduate and graduate), so 95% of the books I have read (and thus 85% of the books I own) are underlined, annotated, flagged, and generally beat up. I’m not gentle on books. I worked in mass-market publishing for a couple years and know exactly how little books cost to make. I don’t feel bad about breaking the spine on a mass-market title, nor do I have any issue with doing the same on a Penguin Classic. No one hand-crafting these books. I leave the dust jacket of a hardcover at home, because damaging that is just silly. You can damage the cover all you want and then cover it with the pristine jacket.

I digress.

In order to sell books, they need to be in pretty good condition. The condition that mine are definitely not in.

I have resigned myself to donating a huge percentage of my books with full knowledge that I spent thousands on this library and I’ll never see that money again. If someone else reads these books, I’m happy.

I have also resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to the dark side. The e-reader side. I love the concept of a physical book and have resisted this change for as long as decent e-readers have been around. But…when you’re done with an electronic book, it simply disappears. It was never physical to begin with, so there’s no waste. No trees had to die.

And maybe I can put a few decorative objects on my half-dozen bookshelves. Or replace them with lighter, airier ones.  Like these:

CB2 (obviously)

I could never have gotten these while still addicted to books, for fear the books would fall off all the time. And I'd have to invest in bookends. And I don't think I'm bookend-y.

I boxed up a couple dozen books over the weekend. Mercilessly. The fiction and literature section of my library is alphabetized. People, I boxed up Jane Austen without batting an eye. I could not do the same for Paul Auster, likely out of guilt for not having seen him speak on Friday. I am able to keep on living because I know Jane Austen ebooks are free. Paul Auster, on the other hand, might hunt me down and kill me if I bought him in ebook form.

While I did this, Husband took to the reference shelf and threw out LSAT and GRE books.  Why did we keep them? He then stared at my Disney VHS tapes and remembered that we'd boxed a crap ton of them in an earlier overhaul.

I admit this to you: In high school and early college, I was an aficionado of The Goo Goo Dolls. What? I’m from Western New York. I can’t help it. And their albums before “Dizzy Up the Girl” were amazing. I taped every single television appearance they made. I have like, a dozen tapes of various television appearances, videos, and concerts. My love for them fell out of fashion around the time video tapes fell out of fashion.

I also taped Legends of the Fall from HBO and put hearts all over the tape. I'm not proud.

Video tapes, my friends, are freaking hard to dispose of. NYC Waste Management doesn’t want them. I’m not donating crap I taped off the television. NYC wants me to use this service to dispose of them. Um? $9.95 to send my VHS tapes somewhere? …I guess I’ll have to suck it up and do it.

The various electronic appliances (old phones, a zip drive, chargers for things we no longer own) can be dropped off at Best Buy, who will happily recycle them. Best Buy doesn’t want my VHS tapes. They are missing out.

Husband looking through my old tapes of course lead to him finding the video taken in my high school public speaking class. And watching it. And making fun of my (former!) Rochester accent.

We later watched a tape of a variety show he emceed in high school. He is exactly the same, but with better pants.

Cleaning our life detritus is dangerous, folks. You can discover embarrassing pasts…or just how difficult it is to dispose of outdated technology.  I bet I could recycle an old Kindle more easily than I can get rid of these VHS tapes.