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Ceci n'est pas un Reading Wednesday
Mar. 24th, 2021 01:32 pmBooks Are Passing From Our Lives
I've been pulling a book or two off my shelves every week that I don't necessarily need to keep right now, given limited space. When I took down Finnegans Wake, I found that I'd put tabs in to mark off certain sections - something I'd completely forgotten about doing. In case you're interested, the sections are: Rocks Fall, Bar Gossip, Museum of Puns, The Tristan Part, and Will You Have A Nice Cup of Tea?
It's easy to give away books like the Wake which are new/in good condition and (seem to me) highly likely to find buyers; it's harder when it's something with a less obvious pitch, like Starting Your Own Magazine, a hard-nosed guide for the entrepreneur in 1998 by "Mr. Magazine" Samir Husni, which I wouldn't find especially interesting even if I had a time machine and plans to start a magazine in the past, or Unleashing Feminism, a messy and unpleasant dispatch from the Porn Wars of the 1990s. I feel a perverse sense of responsibility toward these books I don't really want, because if I don't want them, who could?
Anyway, the master plan is working well enough; my shelves are getting emptier and I don't have random yearbooks sitting on the floor under the bookcases anymore.
However, I Left The House
. . . and came back with five new books. It could have been a lot fewer, but I made the mistake of opening the door of the Larger Free Library on my way to pay some fees and renew my card at the university library (Largest Restricted Library, if we're keeping up the naming scheme) and couldn't give myself a reason not to take Les Miserables, Bunnicula, and Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump. The first two are books I've vaguely wanted to re-read for years and was never going to get around to taking out of the library; the third I was curious about but reluctant to feed the Trump attention spiral in any way. Its appearance in an anonymous library box is a rare chance to have it both ways.
The other two books I bought at the bookstore on purpose: Ring Shout and My Year Abroad. These are both books that I read a review of at some point, thought "I should read this IMMEDIATELY" and immediately forgot about. Now they're right in front of me so I won't forget again. This doesn't do much to help me with the other ~5000 books in that category, but it's not nothing.
I've been pulling a book or two off my shelves every week that I don't necessarily need to keep right now, given limited space. When I took down Finnegans Wake, I found that I'd put tabs in to mark off certain sections - something I'd completely forgotten about doing. In case you're interested, the sections are: Rocks Fall, Bar Gossip, Museum of Puns, The Tristan Part, and Will You Have A Nice Cup of Tea?
It's easy to give away books like the Wake which are new/in good condition and (seem to me) highly likely to find buyers; it's harder when it's something with a less obvious pitch, like Starting Your Own Magazine, a hard-nosed guide for the entrepreneur in 1998 by "Mr. Magazine" Samir Husni, which I wouldn't find especially interesting even if I had a time machine and plans to start a magazine in the past, or Unleashing Feminism, a messy and unpleasant dispatch from the Porn Wars of the 1990s. I feel a perverse sense of responsibility toward these books I don't really want, because if I don't want them, who could?
Anyway, the master plan is working well enough; my shelves are getting emptier and I don't have random yearbooks sitting on the floor under the bookcases anymore.
However, I Left The House
. . . and came back with five new books. It could have been a lot fewer, but I made the mistake of opening the door of the Larger Free Library on my way to pay some fees and renew my card at the university library (Largest Restricted Library, if we're keeping up the naming scheme) and couldn't give myself a reason not to take Les Miserables, Bunnicula, and Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump. The first two are books I've vaguely wanted to re-read for years and was never going to get around to taking out of the library; the third I was curious about but reluctant to feed the Trump attention spiral in any way. Its appearance in an anonymous library box is a rare chance to have it both ways.
The other two books I bought at the bookstore on purpose: Ring Shout and My Year Abroad. These are both books that I read a review of at some point, thought "I should read this IMMEDIATELY" and immediately forgot about. Now they're right in front of me so I won't forget again. This doesn't do much to help me with the other ~5000 books in that category, but it's not nothing.
