The milestones of age I notice most are those of my kids: first time to smile, to laugh, to turn over, to be able to locate middle C on the piano and play a C scale, crossing under with the thumb. Less frequently I notice my own. I'm always startled.
Saturday, Aug. 25: Fishing waders, wine and glass rack, books!
A variety of decorative household items, including wine rack and glass holder, fishing waders, books, cross-country skis, African masks, candleholders, children's/baby gear, complete set of encyclopedias, more.
In past years, I would never have considered selling my books. (Though I gave them away from time to time.) Good books or bad ones, silly pulp paperback, high literature or academic reference. If the books were in the house, the stories and facts were mine as surely as if they were still in my head.
Things have changed, I realized as we prepped for the sale, though. It's not just that I have carried these books, in their cardboard moving boxes from one home to another, from basement to attic to garage, leaving my back with indelible memories. It's not just that we don't even have room in the house for the number of shelves it would take to hold these books. It's not just that I turn to the Internet for quick bites of reference now – something that would have been impossible when my mania for book accumulation began.
All of those thing play a role, surely, but none is the prime mover in this.
It's that I don't believe anymore that I will ever read some of them again. I am too old. I have gone over some crucial continental divide on the uneven terrain of my life. While I can recall reading all of these – even the stupid ones – with delicious fondness, I know I will not get a chance to read them again, and that even if I did, I would not be fond of them now. They do not make the cut.
Here're the criteria I now have for keeping books:
1. The book is so deep that I can read it again and again throughout the stages of my life and always feel like I am reading a new book. The Sun Also Rises is a book like this.
2. The book provides reference material (literature can be included in this category) that I know I will turn to again for future writing or reading.
3. I want the book in the house so that in an idle moment one of the children (when they are a bit older) might pick it up, leaf through it, become engrossed and read it. This doesn't mean it has to be the academic sort of literature – I'd be happy for the kids to share my fondness for certain kinds of fantasy and science fiction as well.
4. The book was a gift or is inscribed by the author.
5. I love the book, for none of the reasons above and probably for no reason I could really put into words, too much to part with.
All of my books used to fall into this last category. Now many of them will turn up on the front lawn during tomorrow's yard sale.
And in this way, they are akin to other ways I have chosen to spend time in life. Now that the behind-me part of my life seems to be expanding so quickly and the before-me part seems to be shrinking – or at least not the infinite span it seems when you are a kid, I am becoming maybe a little more discriminating. And for frivolous choices, like frivolous books, I have no regrets – they imparted their own lessons; some very serious. But at the same time, I would not choose them again, now, especially if they were just a repeat of what's already passed.
So tomorrow I will sell books. Some nicely written ones, some badly written ones, all I think pretty well read. And I'll make room in the house, and in my jumbled, media-saturated head, for some new stories.
