Deciding What Books I Will Keep

September 28, 2023September 28, 2023 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

I wrote yesterday about the realization that it is time to deaccumulate books. The question is, what will I keep?

Here are some first thoughts:

A goal is to get our books to the place where moving them, presumably to a smaller place is manageable both in terms of the number of books and the space they will take up. One person commented on yesterday’s post that they try to keep their collection to two boxes so they are ready to move easily at any time. I’m not there yet but that is commendable.

I want to keep some books of timeless beauty and excellence. So many books are “dated” in ten years. I will probably hang onto our Library of America and may set out to read the ones I’ve not gotten to.

I want to keep the books of favored authors. Wendell Berry, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, The Inklings, Chesterton, Sayers, and MacDonald come to mind as well as Pilgrim’s Progress.

I want to keep great theological works–Calvin and Augustine come to mind. Very few recent. Fleming Routledge is an exception.

There are some other Christian writers who have been companions on the journey–Eugene Peterson, J. I. Packer, some John Stott, and James Sire, a personal friend whose thought and writing influenced me from college days to the present.

Reference works if the scholarship is reasonably current and I don’t have duplicate electronic copies. I have a lot of Bible commentaries. I will save the best–Barth on Romans, Lane on Mark, Carson on John come to mind.

There are a few family heirlooms–my grandfather Scott’s Balzac series that my mom loved, some family Bibles.

In history and biography, I will save the most exceptional–Manchester on Churchill, Churchill himself, Chernow on Washington and Grant, and Isaacson on Da Vinci are at the top of the list.

I may keep more poetry than literary prose–George Herbert, Beowulf (my Seamus Heaney translation), Seamus Heaney himself, Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, to name a few.

I probably prefer hardbound books or quality paperbacks for looks and durability.

In the case of books I review, I will probably keep very few. That doesn’t mean they are not worthwhile, but simply that I probably won’t keep coming back to them.

One thing many of the books I’ve mentioned have in common is that I turn to many of them again and again. They continue to reward me with insight. If not, then why do I keep them?

Some I will keep because they represent important junctures in my life, from the Reinhold Niebuhr I discovered in college to a spiritual formation book by Leighton Ford that focused on attentiveness.

This is a process that I will pursue gradually–say two to three books a day, a box a week, a shelf at a time. I suspect there will be a series of “cuts” or “culls.” After all, I hope I had good reasons for originally acquiring the books I did.

Others who have described going through this call it painful. I see that. But I also see it as a chance to remember my reading life. I see it as a chance to liberate my books–to give them a chance to be read by someone else rather than gathering dust on my shelves. And I see it as a chance to bring my library to greater focus, even as this is true for the rest of my life.

Personally, I think it is denial and irresponsibility to let a spouse or children do this for us, if we are granted the time to do this ourselves. And perhaps it is one more parting gift to leave them with the books that clearly meant the most to us, that tangibly express what was dearest to us.

I’d love to hear from others going through this stage of life. I think it is time for adult conversations about such things in the community of bibliophiles.

On Moving Seventy-Five Boxes of Books

September 27, 2023September 26, 2023 / rtrube54 / 5 Comments

We are in the middle of a long anticipated home project of replacing the old carpet in the upper level of our raised ranch with wood flooring. All but one room has flooring in it as I write and if everything goes as we hope it will done the day you are reading this.

We have lived in our house over 33 years. While we cleared the kitchen a few years ago for a remodel, this is the first time for all the other rooms upstairs. It meant emptying all that was in cupboards and especially on bookshelves.

I ended up hauling 75 boxes of books downstairs. My Library of America collection and some of my mother’s old books. Gardening books, art books, and decorating books, and other miscellaneous fiction including my wife’s Murder She Wrote collection of books. Did I mention that it came to 75 box loads that we more or less stacked under an eight foot long table in our family room.

We won’t be hauling them all back upstairs–we have a huge pile to take to Half Price Books. It has made me look at the books on the lower level of our house, mostly mine, with new eyes. One of our next projects is to re-paint and carpet the lower level of our home (after replenishing some savings from this project). We had less than a month to get ready for this project. I have a year, most likely for the next.

One way or another, it will mean moving a lot of books. To my mind, this must be the year of saying good bye to many old friends. I don’t want to move all this stuff around only for my son to have to deal with it in another decade or so, depending on how long the Lord grants us health.

Retirement is on the not-too-distant horizon and I’m realizing that many of the books on work-related topics are becoming much less relevant to my life. At this stage, I probably could write a number of those books.

We have books in a storage closet I will probably never read. They are already boxed up, so these need to go.

I also think of books squirreled away behind other books. I couldn’t even tell you what they are, It suggests that they probably won’t be missed.

There are books I thoroughly enjoyed twenty or so years ago. Some I might think of re-reading, but most probably not. It sounds like they need to go.

It’s not only a lesson in facing how challenging physically this gets when one is approaching his eighth decade. It is really about facing aging and the stages of de-accumulating ahead until that final day when it all gets left behind. It’s about mortality, and that great struggle of readers summarized in our favorite mantra: “So many books; so little time.”

One thing is clear. Hauling all those boxes of books down and then back up stairs is not something I’m eager to do at once. If I am to avoid this Sisyphean task a year from now, I need to begin, once we get rid of the current stack. It occurs to me that if I worked at getting rid of a box a week, the job a year from now might be much more manageable.

There is also another compensation–remembering a life of reading–the conversations, the times shared, or the moments of delight or insight. It’s part of what we do more and more as we age–to remember our lives, to take stock, to celebrate the good. For readers, our books are a big part of that.

Now comes the task of figuring out what to keep…. I’ll save that for another blog.

Where Do Our Books Go When We Die?

September 10, 2020September 10, 2020 / rtrube54 / 5 Comments

One of the great “ultimate questions” is what happens to us when we die? It is an important question, and I personally think that we are not able to truly live meaningfully if we have not reckoned with that question. But I’m going to leave that for another time, another post.

A conversation with my son recently raised a question that matters to many book lovers. What will happen to our books when we die? I was telling my son of clearing out ten boxes of stored books and selling them at two of our local Half Price stores and remarked that what motivated me was thinking of him, and how he’d react if he had to clear out this stuff (which also included old notebooks filled with outdated training materials). He said (maybe half-jokingly) that he’d just get a dumpster and haul it away.

That’s probably realistic based on experiences with my own parents. Fortunately, before they passed, we were able to load up our station wagon with books and donate them to a local library’s book sale, and save a few of the most valuable. We certainly couldn’t take all her books–we had too many of our own!

That ten boxes (and others we’ve previously disposed of) still leave us with plenty of books. The other day, I was looking at hundred year old books that were my grandfather’s and then my mom’s. Cared for, they will outlive me, as will many of the books in our home. I think of the hours of enjoyment and the helpful information many have provided. I hate to think of them ending their lives in a dumpster. I would rather they end in the hands of others who would enjoy them.

Recently, I’ve been reading Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. It’s a fascinating account of bibliophiles who legitimately, and sometimes illegitimately, accumulated huge collections of books, sometimes of great value. Some literally died surrounded by stacks of books. Others made plans to donate collections to libraries, sometimes treasure troves to researchers. Some even donated funds to maintain the collections.

What’s plain to me is that now is the time to accelerate my efforts to find good homes for my books if they are to avoid a dumpster destiny (unless that is what they truly deserve, which might be where mass market paperbacks that are on cheap paper and falling apart should go). Here’s some of the ways I’m approaching it.

With any book I read, it has to be outstanding for me to keep it. If it is new, now is the time to re-sell it, when it will likely command the best price.
I need to cull my shelves, where books are stacked atop of books, sometimes two or three deep. Step one would be to get rid of all the stacks. Step two would be no hidden books. Step three would be to eliminate the books stored in boxes or in other stacks in my office or by the bed.
For my theological books, I’ve been able to pass some along to people building their libraries and to the seminary library where I was a student. If they can’t take them, there are some overseas libraries in developing countries that may take them. I do want to think about what will be useful, which includes thinking about the cultural bias in those books. [A comment for this post from James mentions the Theological Book Network in Grand Rapids, Michigan which has shipped over 2 million theological books to 90 countries.]
I’m still working in collegiate ministry and some books relate to that work. When that work ends, my “higher ed” shelf, and other related books should go.
At some time, it probably makes sense to identify the hundred or so books that are “best friends,” preferably before we may be in a situation where that’s all there may be room for, and start culling out everything else.

Of course, none of us never knows how life will unfold. But being in my sixties and still healthy, it seems that this is a good time to pass along my books where they can be useful for others. They deserve better than the dumpster.

TBR

September 19, 2014 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

One of my TBR piles

That stands for “To Be Read.” One of the things that defines a bibliophile are the stacks of physical and/or e-books waiting “To Be Read.” You know how it goes. You are browsing in the bookstore or a library sale or online and you find a great bargain on a book you’ve wanted to read or you thought sounded interesting in a review you read. You can’t read it immediately so it goes on the stack–or one of the stacks.

If you are a bibliophile, you have probably struggled with this. On the one hand, there is the anticipation of reading the books, which sometimes can be as good as the actual reading! Just to look at the spines, the blurbs on the back of the book or the table of content can whet your appetite (and remind you why you bought that book in the first place).

On the other hand, this can verge on, or cross over the boundary to hoarding, particularly if it seems the piles are taking over your house! The challenge becomes even greater if you start getting sent books to review. I realized recently that I probably don’t have enough life left to read all the unread books I have, either in stacks in my house or on my Kindle. That for me seems to define the line where collecting is at least straying into the territory of hoarding–hard as it is to admit!

There is one TBR pile I probably won’t get rid of. It is by the bed and is what I’d call my “staging area.” When I finish a book, this is where I go for the next book to read. I usually filter books from other piles here as the pile shrinks. Right now the pile has some Jeff Shaara novels, a three volume Teddy Roosevelt biography, and some more “theological” books by Os Guinness, Jurgen Moltmann and an autobiography of Therese of Liseaux. (Previews of future reviews!)

It’s the other piles that need to go. Truthfully, they all make the house look more cluttered. Either I do something or my family will stage an intervention! My first goal would be to clear the one in my spare bedroom by the end of the year (either by moving books into the stack by the bed or getting rid of them).

That confronts a reality I need to deal with. If the books have been on a TBR pile more than a couple years, I need to ask whether I’m really going to read them. This summer, I was able to give away two good size boxes of such books. Yes, I grieved, but I also remember what C.S. Lewis said about our libraries in heaven being comprised of the books we gave away on earth.

There is also the question of where books go after I’ve read them. Once again, it is increasingly apparent that unless it is a book I may re-read or reference, it probably needs to go. I’ve made a rule that I need to weed out a couple books for anything I shelve.

Finally, I can’t shrink these piles if I add to them! Perhaps a goal at this point is to not acquire a new book without reading five others and getting rid of at least that many. That means at most that I can acquire 24 books a year or 2 a month.

Here’s a big goal: have only the TBR pile by the bed by the end of next year. Looking for a good deal on books or even some free ones? Look for a big book purge next summer. It’s time to bring those TBR stacks in line with reality!