I love books. I love the feel of them in my hand and the weight of them in my bag. I love the sound of pages turning and that f-f-f-f-f-f-f-tt sound the pages make when you fan them. I've heard people say they love the smell of books. I love the smell of a brand new book as it wafts up when you turn the cover of your new book but I'm not fond of the dusty, musty smell of books acquired after sitting unread for a time.
I love having them around me and letting my gaze linger on favourite titles while I remember the tales and characters within the covers. They are the first things I packed each time I moved house and I couldn't go a night in a new place without cracking open at least one box of books.
And it hasn't been a one sided relationship. They've kept me company in lonely times and when I've been waiting for transport/doctors/dates/friends, they've cosseted and cocooned me when I've needed comforting or distraction, and they lull me to sleep every night.
But like all relationships there are cons. Collecting dust and taking up space being chief among them.
Notwithstanding these small irritations I still have about 80% of the books that I have either bought or had given to me over the last forty years. And while you might imagine a person wouldn't accumulate a lot of books over that time, let me assure you, you can. Especially when you take into account my inability to walk past a second-hand book store/sale/market without at least having a look, and that I receive at least one book at Christmas and birthdays.
It all adds up, and with so many good books on hand its sometimes hard to let them go. You have to apply a ruthless attitude to book-culling but every time I try to do a serious cull I hang on to all the ones I enjoyed reading and hope to read again some day, and all the ones I bought thinking I would read but haven't yet, in case I do decide to read them some day. Most of the books on my shelves I have read at least once, but my proximity to the quarterly Darebin Library book sale has seen the numbers of "I'd like to read it someday" books swell.
Over the years I've given away heaps of books to charities and our local school to help them with fundraising, but still my bookshelves are overflowing and there are piles of books beside the bed, on the coffee table and the kitchen bench. I found an unopened box of books in a cupboard yesterday, and a stack of books out in the shed. Not just my books either. My two children each boast a fair collection of books too.
In a further step along the road to putting my own stamp on the space I'm inhabiting I am rearranging the lounge room for the first time in ten years, and faced with the task of moving bookshelves (and by extension their contents) it is clear to me that we are running out of space and need to cull again.
So over the weekend and this evening I have been filling boxes. Out go the Little Golden Books my children have outgrown. Out go the children's encyclopaedia sets from the 70s and 80s. Out go most of the picture books – there were some I couldn't bear to part with though, like When The Big Dog Barks (by Munzee Curtis, illustrations by Susan Avishai) and Jane Hissey's gorgeous Little Bear and Old Bear books (lovely illustrations).
I kept classics like A Sausage Went For A Walk, Winnie The Pooh, Robert Ingpen illustrated versions of Peter Pan & Wendy and The Secret Garden, and all of our Dr Seuss books. I kept the books that made us laugh like Kaz Cooke's The Terrible Underpants and it's equally brilliant follow-up Wanda-Linda Goes Beserk. Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen stayed, along with Werner Holzwarth/Wolf Erlbruch's The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business. The entertainingly subversive Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type and Vote For Duck also remain on the shelf. And quite a few more. Sigh.
Still, I have managed to fill four large boxes. As I stuff the culled books into boxes I try not to think about how many times I read them aloud to my children before they could read, and the times we read them aloud together since. I try not to remember the funny voices we put on, or the pictures we marvelled at, or the way we cuddled up on the couch or in bed to share and enjoy these stories. Because if I do remember for too long I'll be tempted to hang on to them in the vain hope that by keeping them I will relive those times. But the memories are inside me not in the books, so I continue to cull and pack and shove out the door.
Re-homing these books is a celebration of my children's maturity and hopefully they will provide pleasure to other, younger children. Besides, with more than 40,000 new book titles published each year we need room to store all of the books to come. We need room for the new stories, the new authors and illustrators that will delight, engross and challenge us in years to come.
We'll read some of those new stories on e-readers, and maybe some old ones too. But I think there'll always be room in my house for a book or two.
What are your favourite books?
Following the recent devastating floods in Queensland, Romance Writers of Australia has launched a book appeal for flooded communities. Find out more and donate books if you can.
