Downsizing my Books :Misha Herwin

 

Husband and I are downsizing. We’re moving from a four bedroom semi to a three bedroom annexe built on to daughter and son-law’s house. More on three-generational living in another blog but for the time being we are embroiled in the process of winnowing out unnecessary stuff.

Whether or not books can be seen as stuff category is debateable. We’ve always lived with a house full and would say that any room without books, bar the shower, is lacking something vital. However we are not going to be able to take them all with us. So, the question is, which ones stay and which go.

For me the easiest way to decide is to put them into categories: ones that are staying come what may, ones that are going and ones that might or might not make the final cut.

The staying ones are easy. These are books that I have an emotional attachment to. They are mostly ones from my childhood which I do re-read occasionally, or ones that have been given to me by friends for a particular reason or special occasion. Years ago my sister-in-law gave me a copy of “The Mouse and his Child” as a present when my son was born. She wrote a lovely message inside and it was something I treasured for years, until it was given away by my ex-husband. I replaced the book but it wasn’t the same and I still miss my copy and mourn its loss.

Books that I’m happy to pass on are easier to define. They are ones that I have enjoyed reading but I won’t be reading again, so they go to friends or to the charity shop.

Then there are the more problematical ones. Some of these have been sitting on my shelves waiting to be read for years. This should indicate that they are disposable, and yet…maybe one day…

Cookery books, of which we have dozens and dozens are of this ilk. Most, though not all, have one or two recipes that I use frequently but others sit there unopened for years. It is obvious these should go and I can’t work out quite why it is so hard to part with them. After all in the era of Google if I want to know how to cook a classic Persian dish all I have to do is look it up on line.

Then there are the non-fiction. Once again Google probably supersedes these but how much nicer it is to browse through a handbook on wildflowers or shells of the British seashore than to scroll down a screen.

The same is true of our beautiful art books. The only problem with them being that there is somehow never enough time simply to sit down and enjoy their contents.

Lastly there are the books that might prove useful one day. Like “The Timetables of History” that I inherited when my son moved out and which I have never yet, some twenty odd years later, opened.

A very dear friend has recently turned a spare bedroom into a library complete with leather reading chairs. If we had the space to do the same I’d take all my books with me, though I have a shrewd suspicion that even then they wouldn’t all fit.

So the cull continues.