Tidying up on the weekend and trying to organize a bit, my gaze fell upon my books. Are they really worth keeping? They take up a lot of space, space that we don’t really have, and I never use them. Their utility is very low.
But I love them. Some of them have changed the way that I see the world. Some of them have lots of great memories attached to them.
In the end I decided that the best way to appreciate their true worth is to get them into the hands of others to enjoy. I’m giving them away¹ so that hopefully they can mean something to others. That was the best way to value them.
My memories aren’t attached to the physical objects themselves, but their contents. Now that the library service is so great, with inter-library loans, we still have access to the books. Also, some are now open-sourced online (eg https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas) so I can look them up in the future if I ever want to re-read them.
One reason for hanging on to them was to pass on to my daughter. One day, she’d read them, and then we would share how great they were. I can still point her in their direction, and hopefully she’ll like some of the same books that I did, but we don’t need them hanging around in the meanwhile.
Only time will tell if this was a foolish decision.
¹Nearly all of them. I’m keeping books that I refer to often, ones that I’ll read to my daughter in the next few years, and my rare copy of Raymond Briggs’ “When the Wind Blows” which I see is worth between $100 to $150 already.
Booksa are wonderful, but usually better if they’re being read by someone. I used to have four bookshelves full of books, and whittled them down to the stuff that means something to me. Still, I probably need to go through them again. Like everything else in life, it’s good to keep what’s important, and not carry around excess baggage.