Drowning in Books

by Sandra Parshall

Books on my desk.

Books on tables.

Books piled in front of other books on shelves. On virtually every shelf.

Boxes of books stacked in corners.

Books on chairs, books on the floor.

Help! 

I am drowning in books, and if I hope to ever have room for... well, more books... I have to get rid of some of these tomes that currently overwhelm me.

Rather than grabbing an armful at a time and tossing them into boxes, which might precipitate a total psychological breakdown, I thought a careful pruning, a selective weeding out of unwanted volumes would be painless. And maybe it would be, if I knew the meaning of "unwanted" in connection with books. I would like to keep all of them and perhaps build new additions to the house when we run out of space.

But I must be realistic. The selection process must begin.

Every room except one in our house has bookshelves, so I have a big job. I can, at least, ignore the books in my husband’s study, which are entirely his problem. Instead of going at the rest from a negative starting point – What can I toss? – I will first mark as off-limits the books that must stay, the ones that have earned a permanent home in the Parshall manse.

First, my reference collection, all my books on crime and crime-solving, are staying put. I’ll hang onto my how-to writing books, because every time I finish writing a novel I forget how to do it and become convinced I’ll never do it again. I wouldn’t part with Donald Maass’s inspiring Fire in Fiction, in particular. 

Family room

Family room

My gardening books, my cookbooks (which are mostly stashed in cabinets and not on view), my photography books, my birding books, my plant and animal reference books, most shelved in the family room: definitely keepers. We can probably throw away the older editions of movie references – except that they might contain entries that have been purged from later editions to save space. Best to check and make sure – some other time. (I don’t care if all that information is available online. I want to be able to grab a book and look it up, not go to my computer or iPad and launch an internet search.)

Living room nonfiction shelves

I really do need all the books on history,
especially those about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe, the kings and queens of England, the Borgias, the Tudors, et al. You would be amazed how often I look things up in them (such as when I want to refresh my memory of the facts after some TV drama has presented a fanciful version). I’m also reluctant to dispose of any biographies, even if I doubt I’ll ever open them again. I may doubt it, but I can’t know for sure, so best hold onto them. Again, online is no substitute. In any case, the nonfiction shelves in the living room, at least, always look reasonably tidy, probably because the bulk of our history and biography volumes are in my husband's study.

Poetry collections, books on literature – they stay.

And now we’ve arrived at the crux of my book population problem: fiction. Realistically, how many of these novels will I ever read again, or even dip into? I can name some with certainty: all of Isak Dinesen’s Gothic tales (as well as her marvelous memoirs of Africa); all of Flannery O’Connor; all of Carson McCullers; several of Thomas H. Cook’s novels, which refresh my pleasure in the crafting of evocative prose; and my old, worn hardcover copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Living room fiction shelves after a major purge

I also won’t part with any Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine novels, or my copy of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, and a few other works of crime fiction that soar above the ordinary. I love Louise Erdrich and Edna O’Brien too much to let go of anything of theirs. I used to feel that way about a few other writers, particularly southern authors, but those bonds have loosened and I haven’t glanced at their old work or read their new in years.

What you see in these pictures is a fraction of the books in our house. The worst problem is in my study, where I write and where the majority of books coming into the house end up. The bookcase at the top of this blog is one of several in my study. The picture is a tight shot because just beyond the camera's range is a mess of such proportions that I'm ashamed to let you see it. The other shelves in the room are equally crowded, and I have boxes of books and stacks of books that haven't found space on shelves. I have books in the closet and books on the floor. My study is a disaster area, but FEMA is busy elsewhere just now, and responsibility for the cleanup is mine alone.

Will I make serious progress in purging this overgrown collection? Or will I stop the minute I’ve cleared just enough space to get all the loose books neatly lined up on the shelves (without so much as an inch left for the next new book that makes it through the door)? Anybody want to lay bets, or this one too easy to call?

When was the last time you cleaned out your book collection? Have you ever tossed something you later wished you’d kept?

Book Lust, the (digital) sequel

Sandra Parshall

In May of 2007, the last time I wrote about book lust – we all know what that is, don’t we? – the publishing world existed in a universe quite different from today’s.

I waxed rhapsodic about the bookness of a book:

What in this world is more wondrous, magical, intriguing, alluring than a book? An entire world contained between two covers! But It’s not the content alone that I love. I enjoy the feel of a book in my hands, I admire a sturdy spine, I appreciate an attractive cover and an elegant design. I’m a type junky and always check to see whether the book includes a note about the type. I’m disappointed when I don’t find that information. (My favorite typeface, at least for the moment, is Sabon, which is used in Stephen Booth’s British editions.)

I admitted that once I owned a book, I never wanted to let it go. When we moved, about 20 years ago, from one Washington, DC suburb to another, we thinned our book collection and donated dozens to the Arlington County (VA) Central Library’s used book room. As soon as they were gone, I began to suffer an agonizing remorse. How could I have given them up? How could I live without them? For a long time after we moved next door to Fairfax County, I made regular trips to the Arlington Library, where -- yes -- I gradually bought back a fair number of the books we had donated. They were mine. They belonged at home with me, not with strangers.

Every reader and writer I knew felt the same way. Although they sometimes complained about the lack of space in their houses for other objects, not to mention humans, they could not part with their books.

That was May, 2007. On November 19 of that year, the Kindle went on sale. Some of us laughed at it. We already knew about e-books. We knew that practically nobody read them. After all, who would want to read off an electronic screen when they could be holding a real book in their hands?

But while earlier e-readers had languished in the marketplace, the Kindle had the might of Amazon and its breathtakingly huge inventory behind it, and the Kindle began to sell. We heard a rumble deep in the heart of the book world. We felt a faint tremor in the earth beneath our feet. The rumble grew to a roar, the tremor built to a violent convulsion that threatened to leave no bookstore standing.

And the definition of book lust morphed into something undreamt of in the spring of 2007 B.K.

People who coveted printed books in the Before Kindle era started looking askance at those piles of rectangular objects that took up so much space at home and were a nuisance to carry while traveling. To be sure, diehard fans of “real books” remain. But many have turned into hybrids, declaring that as much as they love printed books and always will, they don’t have room for any more and prefer to acquire e-books instead. E-reader tablets continue to sell, and as many as one-fourth of all Americans already own one. (At the end of 2011, Amazon sold a million Kindles a week.) E-book sales are gaining market share by leaps and bounds.

In the wake of all this change, I have noticed the parallel growth of e-book lust. Some people declare that they have more e-books on their machines than they will ever get around to reading. They troll for free e-books online and download them in staggering numbers. I suspect that a great many of those books will never be read, which is not something the authors want to hear. Electronic book hoarding has a lot in common with print book hoarding. Its one virtue is that it takes up less space.

I have an iPad with the Kindle app on it, and I’ve downloaded a handful of e-books. If a reference book I might use often for research is especially cheap as an e-book, I will download it. I stay away from the Kindle Store because I know I am a book addict and I don’t want to tempt myself. Once I give in to the urge to go browsing, I will be lost.

Now let’s talk about your book habits.

Do you own an e-reader?

How many books are on it right now?

How many downloads have you bought in the last month? The last year?

Are you buying more e-books than printed books?

How many of your downloads have you actually read?

Have you downloaded books on impulse, only to realize later that you’ll probably never read them?

Do you remove a book from your reader after you’ve read it or decided you don’t want to read it?

Have you ever given an e-book as a gift? Do you think you ever will?

Book Lust

Sandra Parshall

At a recent book signing, I met a couple who live in a four-room apartment with 8,000 books.

I cannot tell you how deeply I envy them. Our home is bigger than theirs, and we don’t have 8,000 books. I’ll bet we don’t have more than 3,000. But it’s not from lack of trying -- or buying, I should say. I can’t go into a bookstore without wanting to own every volume in it. What in this world is more wondrous, magical, intriguing, alluring than a book? An entire world contained between two covers!

It’s not the content alone that I love. I enjoy the feel of a book in my hands, I admire a sturdy spine, I appreciate an attractive cover and an elegant design. I’m a type junky and always check to see whether the book includes a note about the type. I’m disappointed when I don’t find that information. (My favorite typeface, at least for the moment, is Sabon, which is used in Stephen Booth’s British editions.)

Once I own a book, I never want to let it go. When we moved, about 15 years ago, from one Washington, DC suburb to another, we decided it was a good time to thin our book collection. We went through them all and filled box after box to donate to the Arlington County Central Library’s used book room. As soon as they were gone, I began to suffer the most agonizing remorse. How could I have them go? How could I live without them? For a long time after we moved to the county next door, I made regular trips to the Arlington Library, where -- yes -- I gradually bought back a fair number of the books we had donated. They’re mine. They belong at home with me, not with strangers.

I’m constantly adding new ones, but that doesn’t mean I’ll dump the old ones to make room. We have a Modern Library edition of The Grapes of Wrath with a $1.65 price on the cover. We have one of the early editions of To Kill a Mockingbird, which I consider the greatest American novel ever written. We have a 1910 edition of David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson and a copy of Middlemarch that is so old the pages have turned dark brown and I'm almost afraid to handle it.

I’ll admit that I never look inside most books after I’ve read them. I just like to see them on the shelf. A few, though, call me back again and again. Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass still enthrall me after many readings, and make me homesick for a romantic, idealized East Africa that I’ve never seen and which, in truth, probably never existed. It doesn’t have to be real; I can go there anytime I want to by opening a book. I also reread passages from Thomas H. Cook’s psychological suspense novels when I feel as if I’ve forgotten how to write (a dismayingly frequent occurrence). Cook shows me the way. Dinesen’s memoirs, plus To Kill a Mockingbird and one or two of Cook’s novels, are the books I never want to be without.

Occasionally I get the notion that I should reduce the glut of books in our house. But how to do it with minimal trauma? I could try the method I once heard Donna Andrews describe. She has plastic bins in her garage where she places books she’s decided to give away. This gets them out of the house proper without the agony of a sudden, final parting. They’re still there in the garage if she changes her mind. When she’s used to the idea of parting with them, they’re finally donated. Yes, I could try this approach. But I know myself too well. Regardless of where I donated books, if they remained accessible to me I might try to get them back before long, even if I had to pay for them.

But enough about my passion for books. Let’s talk about yours.

How many books do you own?

How many have you bought in the last year?

What is the oldest book you own?

What is the one book you will never part with?

Which book do you reread (in part or in full) most often?

How many books do you own but have never read?

How many books do you give away in an average year?

Do you ask friends and family to buy you books as gifts? Do they -- or do they insist on giving you “something more personal”? (And don’t you just hate that?)