I I settled into my workroom in Sydney eight years ago and quickly built meters of shelving to accommodate all the books that had moved across the city and all the books that would be published in the coming years.
Within a few years, the shelves were groaning with hundreds of insects that had entered the house through various means. I love my local bookstore and not a week goes by that I don’t buy at least one book. And there are many that are sent to me by publishers or other authors for future review or just because. There is also evidence for approval. In addition to all the books my partner has sent me and given to us, and of course the many books I can’t get past at my favorite street library, we have… I have a problem.
They were stacked three deep in shelves, with others pushed horizontally into gaps above the rows. There was a pile in the corner of my desk. A rickety mound rests on the mantel and chair.
For someone who loves books, this seemed appropriate in a way. The problem was, there were no orders at all. We had to pull out dozens of books and put most of them back in order to find what we wanted or needed.
Where was that wonderful Martin Amis autobiography, The Experience, that I had to get after I learned of his death (again, this is my all-time favorite author)? (This is a memoir). Wasn’t there a biography and memoir section? You won’t find it anymore! Perhaps it’s in his novels? But they’re buried somewhere behind the other two rows. It took several hours. It shouldn’t have been that difficult.
Something needed to change. Then the culling began in earnest.
What to give away and what to keep when it comes to charitable giving is a vexing dilemma.
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I was excited to find two more Jenny Erpenbeck novels that my partner had read and recommended years ago, but I couldn’t.
Keepers include almost anything signed by someone we know or written by a friend. That’s a lot. And there are always favorites, like those special books we read as children or those that were influential in helping us understand the world and the transformative, magical alchemy of reading and writing. We may never read them again. But parting with them somehow seems to erase precious memories.
What about those autographed books you know you’ll never read again? Something like the first edition of Norman Mailer’s The Time of Our Time? Early Thea Astley?
For several years I became addicted to online auctions of “classic” books, including Australian first editions. So, for example, I had a number of first editions of My Brother Jack and the Sponge Divers, which George Johnston co-wrote with his wife Charmian Clift and won the Miles Franklin Award. I kept these as gifts.
On the other hand, I have amassed a sizeable collection of military history (sort of by chance, due to writing a kind of gonzo history centering around elements of the First World War, and an interest in the Anzac myth). Most of them will never be collected and reopened. Some were donated to charity, but much of the rest is in the TBC (under consideration) pile.
However, I received a first edition 12-volume set of Charles Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, presented to me by a dear friend before he passed away 18 months ago, in a cardboard package. I plan to keep it as is.
On the other hand, discoveries are made through purges. I was excited to find two more Jenny Erpenbeck novels that my partner had read and recommended years ago, but I couldn’t find (during the purge, I I was reading Erpenbeck’s wonderful Kairos). They are now part of my summer reading list, along with a few novels that were gifted to me by a friend a while ago and slipped into the bibliophile breakfast in my study.
We took hundreds of books to charities to resell. But a few people kept coming from the other direction, especially courtesy of the street library. An early edition of Patrick White’s Eye of the Storm (unread) and Louise Kennedy’s beautiful and haunting Trespass (my own book signed by her at Adelaide Writers’ Week never went boomerang) (There is no such thing). But I can’t remember who borrowed it. If you’re reading this, let’s exchange it?).
And yet, for now, I’ve dusted off my bookshelves, rearranged the remaining books, and discovered some new ones, but they seem far fewer and far more numerous.
Over the next few years, I think I’ll be letting go of most of the books I love but don’t think I’ll read anymore. In the hands and hearts of others, it feels like a worthy bequest.
But I think part of me remembers reading Moby Dick at least one more time. And I need to try Ulysses again. And William Boyd’s wonderful (signed) Any Human Heart, which I seem to reread about every two years.
They will be with me for a while yet.
Paul Daley is a columnist for Guardian Australia
