Thursday 30 July 2015

Cleaning Off Shelves

I've come to a dilemma in my life. It's time I addressed the issue and since I've been delaying things, it's really got quite out of hand.

My bookshelves are a mess.

When I moved to London I vowed to take with me, the books that I haven't read yet, to fill my shelves with endless reading material and finally check some of those titles off of my TBR list. since moving in, I've met with the other bookworms in the house, introducing me to new authors, lending me books from the house library and their own shelves. My birthday also threw up a slew of new books, plus London second hand bargains are a weakness...

So what has actually ended up happening is that I have more books than I can fit on my shelves AND I still havent read many of the ones I moved with. They are starting to feel familiar in their own way, making my room feel homey, I run my eyes over the same titles again and again, with the comforting feeling that I have no idea what each title means.

I have resolved to take all of the read books away to my parental storage unit (and inevitably return with some more that I haven't read). I do occasionally have book purges, but without a really good way of disposing of them in bulk the fated few collect dust in a box, away from the shiny and unread potential of the others.

The only trouble I really have is that I like to hold onto my books for a little while after I've read them, even if I know I won't read them again, I like to keep them around. While unread books hold that special, secret quality to them, books that you've already devoured are part of your life story now. Oh yes, I read that on my 24th birthday, and this one I read on the tube, and I think I took that one on holiday, yes, here's the sand between the pages. There's a nostalgia to books that makes them hard to let go of.

There is one way I DO like to clean off my shelves, either by passing a book on to a friend, or passing it on using Books on the Underground... which is a whole other blog.

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