Paring down one’s wardrobe is one thing, but what kind of degenerate only wants to own 30 books (or fewer) at a time on purpose? What sort of psychopath rips out pages from their favorite books and throws away the rest so they can, as my wife Susan puts it, “keep only the words they like?” For those of us for whom even the word “book” sparks joy, this constitutes a serious disconnect. Still, as the weather gets warmer, many readers will tackle their spring cleaning with The Life-Changing Magic in hand.
Following her instructions, I herded all of my books into one room and put them on the floor. There were more than 500, ranging from books I’d been given as a small child to advance review copies of novels I’d received within the last week. Somehow they did not appear as numerous as one would expect. They looked vulnerable and exposed when stacked up in this way, out of context, like when the TSA zips open your suitcase at the airport.
Your socks will feel sad unless you treat them gently and fold them properly, she tells me with emotion, before instructing me to put their cast-off brethren books in a garbage bag and send them to the landfill.
I went through my books one by one. My inner self says you shouldn’t open the books, but I broke that rule—not to read them, but to see what I might have long-ago stashed inside.
There was a surprising amount of stuff between the pages—letters, tickets, photographs, receipts. I found my New Year’s Eve resolutions for 1998; a slip of paper acknowledging my plea of GUILTY to a speeding ticket and instructing me to pay $125 to the town of Albany, New York; a hospital bill for $564; a Xeroxed page from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself with the stanza circled that begins I have said that the soul is not more than the body; a yellow hall pass from my Burrillville high school.
But to my surprise, I found plenty of books in my possession that did not spark joy either. These included books given to me by relatives toward whom I feel no warmth; paperbacks from my sports addiction with the last 20 pages missing; books that have been more than 10 percent eaten by a former white nose that I trapped; two sad-looking copies of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, although I’m not sure why. All told there were 30 such books, or perhaps 60. I didn’t count them.
All the books I’d read already went back on the shelves. The 32 unread books “to be read right now” were returned to my bedside table. The 28 “work-related” volumes—I’m a writer, after all—both read and unread, went in their own pile.
“A book can wait a thousand years unread until the right reader comes along,” said my English teacher George Ducharme, and that’s true. The good ones are incantations, summoning spells. They are a spark, a balm, a letter from home. They contain demons, gods in a box. They are tiny rectangles with the whole universe packed in. We read books that describe magical portals when really it is the books themselves that are the rabbit hole, the wardrobe, the doorway between worlds. Books, like people, are bigger on the inside. It is by this dimension of imaginative relativity that Hal Borland, John Muir, inspire in me.
It’s not true that when you first receive a book is the only right time to read it. Books can stay with you like a fine wine on a quest, taken out of your cloak, unwrapped and understood only at your darkest hour: A light to you when all other lights go out.
It’s a useful exercise to clear the cobwebs from one’s bookshelves once in a while, but don’t let anyone talk you into getting rid of your books if you don’t want to, read or unread. Ask yourself whether or not each book sparks joy,
WHERE TO DONATE YOUR BOOKS (Should you chose to part with them)
Want to donate your books anyway? General places to donate include local libraries, thrift stores, and homeless shelters. Women’s shelters are especially in need of children’s books. Below is a list of specific organizations across the United States that will happily take your unwanted books and share them with people in need.
NYC Books Through Bars sends free donated books to incarcerated people across the nation.
Operation Paperback sends used books to American soldiers overseas, as well as veterans and military families in the United States.
Big Hearted Books & Clothing has drop-off locations throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
Books for Soldiers: By joining, you can view the books that soldiers’ request, and send what you have.
Books4Cause’s book donations have already created 20 libraries in Africa.
Better World Books allows you to box up your books and print out a shipping label (they pay for the cost of shipping).
Since 1988, Books for Africa has shipped over 35 million books to 49 different countries.
Other donation centers include the Prison Book Program, Chicago’s Open Books, New York’s Housing Works, San Francisco’s Project Night Night, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library’s Book Donation Center, and Washington DC’s Books for America. Source: Summer Brennan
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