As the sun began to set over the Pacific, I stopped to catch my breath.
My friend Michael, my fiancée Chelsea, and I had just hauled 20 heavy boxes down a flight of stairs, up a walkway, and stacked them in the back of a moving van. The boxes filled up most of the van, leaving little room for anything else. They were all full of books.
As I wiped the sweat from my brow, a feeling of despair came over me: did I have too many books?
My best friend and my fiancee had both sweated and strained helping me pack up and move those 20 boxes. I felt guilty that my books were taking up so much time, space, and physical exertion to move. I loved my books, but wasn’t this a little… excessive?
When we arrived at our new house, we faced another question: where to put all the books? Although I own a large bookshelf, it’s not nearly big enough to hold all my books, let alone Chelsea’s. Together, our boxes of books filled up the entire room that was supposed to be our guest room.
But this weekend, at Chelsea’s urging, I finally started unpacking my books and putting them back on the shelves.
And you know what? Something magical happened.
As I arranged the books on my shelf, I appreciated the vibrant colors, the cover art, the textures, and yes, even the smell of my books as if for the first time. Handling each one reminded me of the stories I’d enjoyed and the knowledge I’d gained from reading them. Instead of a burden, they felt like a treasure.
There were Chelsea’s Chinese medicine textbooks, my sci-fi and fantasy collection, a whole shelf of poetry, two grad school educations’ worth of psychology books, classic novels from Austen to Tolstoy, spiritual texts from many religions, and even a few of my favorite children’s books.
Unboxing some of my favorite books and holding them in my hands, I felt drawn to re-read them. Re-reading books can be even more valuable and enjoyable than reading them the first time. And re-reading doesn’t have to be a cover-to-cover endeavour—you can just pull a book off the shelf and read one page, one chapter, or one poem.
I remembered that a library is not just a collection of “used” books that sit on a shelf, to be regarded with pride or admired by guests. The books are there to be re-read, referenced, and loaned to friends.
This weekend, Chelsea spent hours poring through a novel she’d bought recently. When she was finished, she was jonesing for another good read, but would have to wait several days for the sequel to arrive in the mail. Taking a moment to peruse our bookshelf, I found a sci-fi novella that I knew she’d love, and handed it to her with confidence that it was just the thing for her book withdrawal. (In case you’re curious, the book I recommended was This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone).
At times I’ve pruned my library extensively, keeping only the books that “sparked joy” and taking boxes and boxes to the used bookstore or the public library. Sometimes that’s necessary, but other times, I’ve gone too far and gotten rid of books that I later wished I’d kept.
At others, I’ve felt guilty of tsundoku, a Japanese term referring to the practice of piling up books without reading them. The author Nassim Nicholas Taleb reframes this practice as keeping an “anti-library,” arguing that the value of unread books greatly exceeds that of books already read, and that we should surround ourselves with unread books in order to remind ourselves of how much we don’t know.
I sometimes think of my library as a visual and tactile memory palace, reminding me of everything I’ve learned over the years about many different subjects, as well as allowing me to go back and reference that knowledge at a glance.
Perhaps keeping a library is like tending a garden. With a garden, you have to sow seeds and water them, but you also have to pull up weeds, and eventually harvest food or cut flowers. It’s both an additive and a subtractive process. With a library, you have to buy books, of course (that’s the fun part), but you also sometimes have to let go of books you no longer love or need. But the point of having a library, like a garden, is to enjoy it. That means taking the time to read and re-read books, reference them, talk or write about them, and share them with friends.
That’s why I brought 20 banker’s boxes full of books 750 miles to our new home.
What’s your relationship with your books? Are you a Kindle-toting minimalist or an Talebian anti-librarian? If you keep a personal library, what purpose does it serve for you? Let me know in the comments.
That’s all for this week! As always, I appreciate your feedback on Mind, Meaning, and Magic. What was your favorite thing I shared this week? What would you like to learn more about? Let me know by replying to this email or leaving a comment on Substack.
Thanks for reading,
Chris Cordry, LMFT
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Chris,
From and to where did you move? I would hate to leave the Pacific. Oh, wait. I did. several times. My sister lives on the coast, so I do get to visit, just not as often as I'd like. I landed, once again, in the desert, with my husband and his books (and other endless collections).
I, too, have the small collection of beloved books from childhood, grad school texts, art books, language books, cookbooks, and beloved non-fiction nature, travel fiction and non-, etc., AND the stack of unread books. They are all smooshed amongst the 50+ years of my husband's book collection- of gorgeous bloomers with equal amounts of ragged weeds. There are times when I get selfish maybe (?) and want to reduce the chaos of it all...every room with overloaded shelves and unkempt stacks collecting dust upon dust. But books are a wonderful thing. If it were only books he collected I might be a little more sane. Maybe not.
Thank you for your missive, and for the reminder that books don't have to be re-read cover to cover.
Good luck in your new surroundings.
Janet