Purging Books
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| My bookshelves |
I look around at the objects around me. So many of them I keep for reasons other than utility or beauty. I have sandwich plates I haven't used since we moved them here from Maine seven months ago. Plates that have been hauled back and forth across the country three times. Still, there's a resistance to getting rid of them: You never know when you might want a small plate, right? Except I haven't used them and likely I almost never will. A paper towel or a bowl will generally suffice. So I'll put them in a box and get rid of them. Yet I still have doubts, what ifs, maybes, that make letting go difficult.
Books are even more difficult. I have dramatically reduced the number of paper books I have, I probably gotten rid of several thousand. Still, I have two tall bookcases filled with books I haven't been able to get rid of.
My stationary bicycle is right next to the bookshelves and while I ride, I've been pulling books off the shelf to read. In this process, I realized that some of these books, books that have survived the many previous cullings and which have been hauled across the country three times now , I don't actually like and don't want to read or re-read.
Yet there's something about these books that strongly attaches me to them. I've told myself that I need these books for some reason, that I'll re-read them or read them for the first time. But the ones I do want to re-read I can just download, since many of them are classics and available online.
What is it about the ones that I don't want to read or re-read that has made me hold on to them? I'm ashamed to admit this, but I think it's a belief that my identity is somehow linked to these books and that I've believed that I won't be the kind of person that I want to be if I get rid of them.
I wrote about this once before when I made the decision to get rid of my Compact Oxford English Dictionary. The OED was no longer fulfilling its previous function in my life. Whenever I needed to learn about the meaning or origins of a word, I looked online. Yet I still hesitated to get rid of it. This led me to realize that I suffered from the belief that I'd lose part of myself if I no longer had the set on my bookshelf. And that's not true. I am who I am without those volumes. And the memories I associate with those books, I have those regardless of whether or not I have a physical copy of the books. So I let them go.
But here it is a few years and book cullings later and I realize I still have many books I'm keeping because I haven't been ready to let them go, due to this misguided belief that I am my books. Each of these books represents some aspect of my identity.
There are a few things I realize from analyzing my reluctance to let go: First, the books I've kept offer some insight into the kind of person I want to believe I am. I can't get rid of my Frog and Toad picture books because I want to imagine myself to be childlike in some respects, because I value straight-forward and simple language, and I love the vision of honesty in relationships that is embodied by frog and toad's friendship. Second, I've used these books as declarations to myself and others to convey that I am a certain kind of person; they have served as communication devices. Third, I've believed that I could not be the person I want to be without these declarations.
Getting rid of some of these books hurts. For some of them it hurts so much I can't do it. I'm keeping my copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends. I'm keeping 1984 and Brave New World, Living the Good Life and The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Maybe this latest culling is me paring down to my core self. Maybe I'm becoming more secure about who I am or maybe I just don't care as much about declaring to others who I am. I wonder if I'll ever be able to rid myself of all my books.
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| Discards |
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