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Now or Never Books


As I mentioned in a previous post, and as it's the season, I am in a purging and organizing mood.  No, I'm not following Marie Kondo's advice as closely as I should be, mostly because it's SO HARD with books, and I have more books than anything else.  I've gone over and over my bookshelves, but I just can't seem to part with any more titles.  The vast majority of my books do spark joy, even if it's just the memory of having read it; I know I'm supposed to get rid of them anyway.  Not sure I can.

I have started making piles that I am calling "now or never" books.  One of the bits of advice in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is essentially: if you haven't read it yet, you're never going to.  I just can't face that.  In the pile pictured above are some books that I know will be amazing, but for some reason I haven't found the time. I have to read these in the next, let's say, 2 months, or they get donated.  It's an odd collection; some I purchased, and some were gifts.  Non-fiction and fiction, authors I have long-enjoyed and some new. Honestly, considering how much I loved I, Claudius, I have no idea why I haven't read Claudius the God, despite owning it for like 20 years.


A lot of my books date from my university days.  These are books I have "read", meaning that I plowed through them on Diet Coke-fueled all nighters right before needing to pass a test or write an essay.  I have no idea what they were about.  Books in this category include The Master and Margarita, Fathers and Sons, and, to my deep embarrassment, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I guess I keep these ones out of guilt, and figure, maybe one day I will properly read them.

I have an alarming number of, well, stupid books: Cruel Shoes, by Steve Martin, Letterman Top Ten lists, Simpson's anthologies.  I never throw out something that can give me a laugh.  The David Sedaris and the Spy magazines stay, too. One of my favourite stupid books is The Bachelor Home Companion, for God's sake. Don't worry, I keep shelves full of Serious Authors, so people won't think I'm a complete moron.  I have titles by Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Timothy Findlay, Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, to name a few, and my favourite- John Updike.  I'm not sure I'll ever re-read Updike's amazing Rabbit tetralogy, so yeah, those are Show Off books, but at least I actually read and enjoyed them.

My t-shirt collection painted an alarmingly accurate picture of my personality, but my bookshelf is where you should actually be able to discern a bit of who I am. If I keep throwing out old books, it feels like I'm misrepresenting myself.  Then again, I'm not sure people need to know that I'm still working my way through my university French textbooks.  I guess there is some room for improvement after all, but you'll pull my dog-eared and fading Portable Dorothy Parker from my cold, dead hands.

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Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 4, 2015 at 8:25 AM

    Lori, I will sponsor you to read the top book on that pile, Twilight of the Elites. If you read it by the 2-month deadline, I will buy you a beverage of your choice from Starbucks! -- Kira

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lori April 4, 2015 at 3:18 PM

    Ha, OK Kira, you're on. have you read it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 11, 2015 at 9:19 PM

    I haven't. That's why you have to read it. Then you can give me the Coles Notes version :D

    -Kira

    ReplyDelete

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