A Bookworm's Dilemma

Here's the thing: I'm looking to get rid of most of the books that I own.  This is not, however, a simple task.  Nor is it a painless one.  I don't have just one or two boxes; I come with the lifetime collection of a bookworm, writer, and graduate student in literature.  That adds up to, as one friend faced with helping me move said, a s**tload of books.

If you are not a lover of books, then you'll think I'm making a big deal out of no deal.  Give 'em away, I can hear you say, or throw them out.  If you are a lover of books, on the other hand, you're probably squirming in anticipated pain at even the idea of divesting yourself of your precious books.  If you are a lover of books, then you know that each of them has meaning for us. They’re not just dead wood pulp with inked words on them.  They are the repositories of memories of time and placewhere was I when I read that book?  What was I doing?  What was my mood, my stage in life? 

For years, whenever I got a new book of any kind, I would write my name on the flyleaf followed by the city and year.  If nothing else, that was a memory prompt to why I bought that book and what place its contents had in my life.  My books are, then, the artifacts of my life. Getting rid of them at some level feels like abandoning pieces of myself.

And yet, my books are a drag on me. There are too many of them. When I moved here from Los Angeles, I brought with me the contents of six overstuffed Ikea bookcases. I don’t know how many cartons they filled; I do know that most of the cartons are still in my garage here. Gathering dust. Being read by no one.  

I want to get rid of them, but I choke on deciding how to do it. I want them to go to good homes, to people who will care for them as I did. Barring that, I want them to serve some greater good. Can you see the psychodynamic underpinnings here? I can, and it is why I must get rid of them.

The Sacramento Library appreciates donations of books, but according to their website, “the truth is that we are not able to sell all of the books donated to us.”  They want books in good condition, that are not marked up or dirty or torn. Immediately, I start to worry about whether my books are sufficiently pristine. I’m a neat reader; I tend not to crack bindings or leave food stains on the pages, but there are those identifying name, city and date markings on the flyleafs. I could ink them out with a thick black Magic Marker, but that would entail going through all of the boxes and dealing with each book, one by one.  Already I’m exhausted.

I recently read about Little Free Libraries: people create their own libraries on their front yards.  Some are just a box; some are miniature houses. All operate on the honor system of “Take a book; bring a book back,” and there’s a website that will help you get started.  I love the idea of that, of people coming to my front lawn and picking out a book or two to take and read. The problem with that is I don’t want them to bring the books back. 

So maybe what I want to create is a Little Free Bookstore.  But my daydream of that is immediately interrupted by the nightmare of some unscrupulous entrepreneur cleaning my library out in the dead of the night and selling my books for a profit.

Maybe I ought to just bite the bullet and sell them myself?  I’ve tried that a couple of times.  I’m actually enrolled as a Barnes & Noble reseller, but I think I’ve had one sale in the several years I’ve been listed.

So many options; so many “yes, buts...”  Once again, it just seems easier to do nothing. Which is what I do every time I try to tackle this job. Nothing. It seems to me that the bullet I have to bite is to quit seeing my books as parts of me and start looking at them as just a lot of dead wood pulp with inked letters on it. Can I do that? I don’t know, Dr. Freud, can I?

Is there anything in your life that you feel about the way I feel about my books? Tell us in the comments.