No one wants your stuff
Rescued from a forum that suddenly disappeared …
I don’t think most book lovers feel this way. I don’t especially think that they should — you do you. But I have had this realization several times in my life (plus once with record albums, once with videotapes, once with DVDs) and proceeded to massively purge my shelves — I’m talking more than a thousand at a go.
It felt good. It made me think deeply about what I actually wanted to get out of books, movies, music. And physically acknowledging that I would never re-read, re-watch, re-listen (or in too many cases read, watch, listen for the first time) was a great weight lifted from me. The decks were cleared, I was unburdened of all those whims of the past which had marked out paths for me to explore, and I had space to consider paths that were attractive to me in the now.
I also suspected, and confirmed from time to time, that it wasn’t all that difficult to remember and track down something I had once read, seen, heard and now wanted to revisit. In my younger years there were times when it was a blessing to have a work on the shelf when it finally came to mind, but those days are gone.
I’m down to a few hundred books on my shelves, one-quarter kept for future reference or sentimental value, the rest books I might want to read in the years left, grouped by theme or author. From time to time I’ll look at one of the groups and say, nope, not gonna happen, and those I immediately donate to the local library. I don’t even want to burden my heirs with knowing that I once found a group of books interesting as they decide what to do with them. Toss them out with my blessing!
I once thought that it was good to collect and curate books as a gift for others. Now I see that the important thing is not the book but what I took from it, which doesn’t accompany a book when I give it. So instead I plan to curate a list of books, noting (briefly) what I got from them. The notes will serve two purposes, either or both of which the reader can ignore: a highly personal tl;dr which stands alone as a bit of wisdom; and a glimpse inside the book which might be helpful when deciding whether to read it.
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