A Sign

For years, DW has been telling me that we need to downsize when it comes to our collection of books. And every time she mentions this news, I've fought back.

"But I'll read these books again," has been my strongest argument.

"You're going to read every single one of these books again?" she challenges.

There used to be a time that I would devour books. Every December, from my university years, I would make a list of the books that I would plan to read in the upcoming year. With The Brown Knowser, I would reach out to my readers for suggestions for what to read, and I received some solid recommendations.

Often, I would start out with a list of 10 to 12 books, and when I got to the last book, I would add a few more. Some years, I would read about two-dozen books or more.

I haven't had a reading list since 2013.

Honestly, I read more when I didn't drive myself to work. At least twice a week, I would take the bus to work, which took at least 90 minutes, each way. On the bus, I'd bury myself in my reading, trying to block out what was going on around me. Reading books made the time go quickly.

I'd also make sure that I left enough time, in the evening, to read a chapter or two before turning out the light and going to sleep.

These days (the last seven or eight years), I've been driving to and from work every day. I also spend more time writing than I do reading. I take a lot of photos and record video. Since the pandemic, I've been watching a lot of TV with my family.

There has been the occasional year when I either haven't cracked open a book or haven't completed one. If I get through more than three books in a year, it's a good year.

Since the COVID lockdown, a year ago, I've read a few more books. I'm two-thirds through my eighth novel, and have my ninth and tenth stacked on my bedside table.

But DW looks at our bookshelves and wants to clear them out. We have more than seven bookshelves, crammed with fiction and non-fiction. Some shelves are double-stacked, such that we have to pull out a book to retrieve another from behind. And even some of these shelves have books lying flat on top of the double-stacked books.

Sometimes, it's hard to find a particular book because it's buried by newer books.

"But I'll read these books again."

"Will you?" asks DW.

In truth, there are some books that I have read more than once. Of those nearly eight books I've read over the past year, all of them had been read before. Six of them had been read twice before, and this was my third reading. They're Len Deighton novels, and I'll never get rid of my collection. Deighton is the author who inspired me to become a writer, myself.

I've also read some of Ian Rankin's books a couple of times. His books will stay on my shelves.

Just this past Saturday, DW reminded me again that we needed to cull our library. This time, I didn't argue as strongly. I was looking at the book shelf closest to my side of the bed, and it was a disorganized mess of both read and unread books.

A few hours later, as DW and I were in the car, heading home from an outing on a nature trail, we were listening to The Next Chapter on CBC Radio. On the show, host Shelagh Rogers was interviewing Canadian personality Candy Palmater, who had just lightened her collection by 1,500 books.

DW turned up the volume: "Listen closely," she told me.

Palmater came to the conclusion that she had to cull her library when she and her partner did some basic math. They took Palmater's rough life expectancy and multiplied it by the number of books that she usually read in a year. The number of books in her collection far exceeded the number of books that she could reasonably read.

"Ring any bells?" DW asked me.

Okay, this was a sign. It's time to find a good home for our collection.

I'm going to start by going through all of the books on the shelves that I haven't yet read. These are growing in number because I continue to buy new books even before I've read the ones I already have.

As I said, I'm keeping all of my Len Deighton books. And those by Ian Rankin.

The first to go are the ones that I read that I either didn't care for or they failed to leave me with a lasting impression. I know that I won't re-read those.

I have a lot of books from university that I haven't re-read: they'll go, with perhaps the exception of my William Shakespeare sonnets and plays.

Some reference books will stay.

This will likely be a long process and may cause some tears to be shed. But DW is right: there are books that are doing nothing but occupying space in our house. And we're moving to an age where downsizing will be good in the long run.

Want a book? Any book? Let me know.