Quest

I am on a mission to cleanse my bookshelves. This is very, very difficult. I love my books. I cannot bear to part with them. I re-read them over and over again. And yet I recognize that things are out of control. I have three very large IKEA bookshelves, approximately 6 feet high and 3 1/2 feet wide with five shelves in each. I also have a smaller pressboard shelf about 3 feet high and 3 1/2 feet wide with two shelves. These bookshelves are stuffed to overflowing. There are books piled on my bedroom floor because I have nowhere else to put them. Something has to give, and until I have a home of my own where I can indulge in my biblioholism without fear of needing to pack and move them all in the (semi-)near future, that means periodic purges of the shelves.

I started with some old law books, which were relatively easy to part with. Then I managed to talk myself out of some old paperbacks that I didn't particularly enjoy the first time I read them. This did not create much space, though. So now I am on a mission to discover which books I actually still like. So I'm re-reading some of the old books of which I have fond-ish memories, but no real recollection and I've found that some of them have NOT withstood the test of time. Others were as good as I remembered and I felt better about keeping them. I'm also trying to read some of the books that I have sitting on my shelf and have never read for one reason or another. Then I can decide if they're worth keeping around. I've found one truly horrible book that way.

It was called "Condemned to Repeat It" and by the description on the dust jacket, I thought it would be about moments in history where the failure to heed the lessons of the past had dire consequences for Ghengis Khan/Alexander the Great/Louis XIV/[insert famous historical figure here]. Instead, I found it to be a pithy collection of "historical" anecdotes used to illustrate a bunch of Successories-style hoo-ha. It was like Steven Covey meets a poorly researched college history project. It's a nice hardback book, so I've listed it on my inventory on half.com -- and I must admit that I feel a little guilty about it because the book was SO awful. But then, there's no accounting for taste, so maybe whoever buys it will just love it. I am relieved to have it gone from my shelves. Next up: Frost on My Moustache. Looks like a charming british travel story. Hope it doesn't turn out to be another pithy disappointment.