I’ve got a bit of a book problem. It’s very much like the kind of problem some people have with food: the kind of problem my father used to refer to when he told me that my eyes were too big for my belly. In the same way that I used to imagine I would be able to eat much more than I actually could, I also wrongly imagine I will be able to read many more books than I actually can.
In the case of food what happens when your eyes are too big for your belly is that people look askance at your still-loaded plate at the end of the meal and you sheepishly resolve to be more realistic next time. The plate gets taken away and maybe you have the leftovers another time. Or not. Books aren’t amenable to that kind of control.
With books my problem starts when I go into a bookshop or any other place where books are for sale. I look at the titles and the covers and I pick up one or two volumes to read their blurbs. Knowing as I do that none of these indicators reliably predict the quality of a book, I generally skim some pages to get a feel for what it really has to offer. Almost without fail I find myself intrigued by at least one of the books I pick up. I always wanted to know more about that, I tell myself. Or, this looks like a different angle on a familiar story. Or, wow, I never knew anything about this event/person, episode. So I buy the book and I take it home. And then I realise there is not a single centimetre of shelf space in our entire house that can hold another book. I look at the shelves already groaning under rows (some double-stacked) of volumes dealing with topics that I really want to read about, one day. All those books I picked up with a clear determination to read, but which, months and years later, are still sitting there, unread. I often think I would like to be able to mainline the information in some books direct into my brain – like some horrible AI scraper or bot that just hoovers up words and files them away so that one day, when somebody asks me, I can give them a half-arsed fragmentary account of something I once read, somewhere . . .
It’s not as if I don’t read. I read a lot of books. One problem though, is that I only really read at night, before I go to sleep. And sometimes I’ve watched a movie or something on a screen before that, so my energy for reading is low and I don’t get through many pages before I start nodding off. And then I probably forget what I just read and have to revise it the next night, so at this rate it takes me a couple of weeks to hoe through a typical book. So the queue of books I mean to read is growing – thanks to new acquisitions – and not shrinking at all.
One issue is what to do with books that I’ve finished reading. Sometimes that’s easy: maybe a book was an OK read but I know I won’t want it again. In a box it goes for disposal.
But there are lots of books that I think I will want to refer to again sometime. They might have a particular chapter that’s very illuminating on a topic that interests me, or maybe it’s just such a great book I want to have it on hand to dip back into in future. Or maybe I want to be able to lend it to friends . . .
Lending books is, of course, a near-infallible way to cull your shelves. The pity of it is that you tend to lend the books you like most, because you want your friends to share the pleasure of reading them. A new friend recently said that, in her home country, they have a saying that there are two types of fools: those who lend books and those who return them. I’m still thinking about the implications of that saying. Generally speaking I don’t like lending books. It’s embarrassing to ask for them to be returned, so more than once I’ve found myself buying a replacement copy, which I suppose makes me a double fool.
I’m not sure exactly how my book-hoarding problem began, but it really has reached silly proportions. Most rooms in our house have bookcases or shelves in them, and most of those are full. Plus I have a store room full of boxes of books and magazines and there are more boxes in the garage. Like I said, silly proportions.
When it comes of getting rid of books I have managed at times to fill some boxes but it never seems to make a dent in the overall quantity. All that happens is that books that were slid on top of other books on shelves or were sitting in drawers or even in little piles on the floor have graduated to their own shelf-spots, leaving their vacated spaces for the newcomers and strays that inevitably wander in.
Trying to cull my books makes me feel helpless in the face of my addiction. I approach a shelf with ruthless determination. I grab a book that seems like it ought to be expendable. I pick it up and open it. I get engrossed in its contents. I realise I can’t part with it, put it back on the shelf and reach for another volume. From a shelf of maybe 50 books I will typically dispose of one or maybe two. And often, a month later, I will regret having let even that one go.
There are only two realistic ways for me to tackle my book problem. One is to bring fewer books into the house. The other is to get rid of some that are already here. So far I am not doing very well on either front.
