Rambling: Book Retention Policy

So, in the perfume blog, I wrote a post about curating my perfume collection. What to keep, why to keep it, how to choose between the advantages of competing bottles, and so on.

It occurs to me, why not do that with all my stuff? Specifically, today, my books? I have rules that I've been following for a while, but I don't recall ever writing them down.

The underlying basis for the rules is the question, why do I keep books?

• To read now or soon. Just for picking-up-and-reading enjoyment. I may be unusual in that I like to re-read books, sometimes many times. But only the right books. It took me a while to realize that I absolutely do not re-read them all.
• To refer to. Planting instructions for potato onions, instructions for making pintucks, recipes, that sort of thing.
• To read in the future. There is a limit to how frequently I want to re-read a book, but sometimes I want to be sure that I'll have the book when I want to read it again.

One of the main things for me to keep in mind here is that I'm not keeping my books to be a librarian. Not to have a complete collection, not to preserve them, not to have them to loan to others. I'm keeping them for me. I'm also not interested in being a collector, focusing on editions and value - I don't have the time or the space or the sustained interest for that. It wouldn't pay me back in enough enjoyment. I can have only so many hobbies, and that one didn't make the cut.

All of this means that, for example, if I'm keeping some of the books written by an author, I don't need to keep all of that author's books. I can keep just enough to enjoy reading that author's voice. This is true, for example, of Patricia Wentworth's mysteries. I read these because I enjoy the voice and the mood - I don't read them for the specific plots. So two or three of the best is enough, and I can give away the rest.

It also means that just because I want something new to read, and I went out and bought that something new, I don't need to keep that book when I'm done. I enjoyed it. I "ate" it. I'm done. Unless it's an extra good book that I'll really want to read again, I can sell it to the used bookstore. And I do - I'd say that I "eat" about a two file boxes of books every year, most of them bought from the used bookstore. They get read, put on the "sell back" shelf, and cycle their way out of the house.

(Why, you ask, don't I save that money and check books out of the library? Because I'm hard on books. I like to be able to read them while doing housework or gardening, and the library would not appreciate wet-and-dried rumpling, or dirt in the binding. I do use the library, but I also like to have a "grubby" book in progress, too.)

And if I want to read a particular book in the future, but that book is so popular that it's unlikely to go out of print, I don't need to keep the book. I can give or sell it away and count on being able to buy it again when I want it. This is true of, for example, Agatha Christie. Unlike Patricia Wentworth's books, I read Agatha Christie's books for the voice and for the specific book. So if her stuff were hard to get, I'd keep it. But Agatha Christie is in print and is likely to remain in print for the foreseeable future, so I can (and did) give them all away, and then just buy an occasional used copy of a book that I have a craving for, read it, and sell it right back to the used bookstore. (Or just give it away.)

On the other hand, Rumer Godden's children's books are very unreliably in print, and often with simply dreadful cover illustrations. And I love these books - they're an important part of my childhood mythos, and Rumer Godden's writing voice is an important influence on my own writing. So I'm actively seeking out the ones that I don't own. However, I don't need to seek them out in fine crisp flawless Firsts - an ex-library copy is just dandy.

And if I'm keeping a book for reference, I don't need another book with the same useful reference information. The example for this is the fabulous book on bulbs that I received for Christmas. All of my other bulb books can go off to the used bookstore now.

And then there's the complication of reference books that I keep for reading enjoyment and pleasure books that I keep for reference. For example, almost any of Judith Martin's books would do as a sufficient etiquette reference, but I keep them to read, and I dip into them several times a year, so the question is how much pleasure I'd get out of having more of them to read, not how much more information they contain. In fact, I'll be buying her new book on weddings, even though I couldn't care less about weddings - it will be funny and well-written and fun to read.

Of course, even with all of these factors, I'd like to keep more books than I have room for. On my children's book shelf, I'd like to keep ex-library copies of not only Rumer Godden and Ruth M. Arthur, but everything by Beverly Cleary and Louise Fitzhugh and a dozen (or maybe a dozen dozen) other authors.

So it comes down to space. All of those guidelines above offer guidance for the decisions that have to be made when The Shelves Are Full. I have eliminated double stacking on my personal shelves, and I so enjoy the pleasure of seeing all of the books and being able to grab the one I want, that I refuse to ever allow double stacking again.

The children's books, to return to that example, get half of one five-foot shelf. They could have the whole shelf, or even another shelf, but then something else would have to go. (And maybe it should - I suspect that I get more pleasure from the children's books than from some of the gardening books that live right below them.) So, so far, they get their half shelf. My very favorites get that space, and the six thousand other children's books that I'd love to own, I either close my eyes to, or buy and read and cycle right back out again. The same for every other category.

So I guess the point of all the rules is the value of a book for me. Not for anybody else, not for resale value, not for collectibility, not to be librarian to the world, not in case I ever have kids. Just for me. I still have a lot of books, and I intend to continue to have a lot of books. But looking at it this way does do a lot to clear out the excess.

Photo: Mine.