The Spring Book Cull Comes To An End

Author photo of one wall of author’s library.

Finished! What a slog. 42 boxes! At about 45 books a box that’s a staggering 1,890 books liberated from my library’s bookshelves. As I filled box after box with increasing weariness, what kept me going was the glittering image of acres of empty shelves. I couldn’t wait to shift books piled in other rooms onto those wide-open spaces.

I folded the last box closed with a satisfied sigh, looked around, and teared up. The bookcases looked exactly the same as when I started. Well, not exactly the same. They gleamed after a thorough dust and vacuum. All the shelves were packed, most two deep.

If you’ve read Terry Pratchett’s comedic/satiric/fantastic Discworld series—if you haven’t, proceed immediately to your nearest bookseller—you’ll remember the Library of Unseen University, where miles of books fit onto one shelf due to the magical physics of L-space, or Library-space. It appears my library lives in B-space, Butt-space, where books expand to fit the space available. Makes sense—too much sitting causes that region to spread. Bottom line: no matter how many books I give away, there will still be no shelf room.

But wait. There’s an alternate explanation for my dismay. After unclenching my hands from one thousand eight hundred ninety books—one at a time, with feeling—I’d expected, strongly, to have finished, to be done. Instead, I was toast. Diagnosis: thwarted expectation.

Logic dictated that I rethink my operating premise. So I did. I made my blooper assuming a library cull is a goal. It’s not. It’s a process. A process uncannily like… writing my book, with its cycle of Eureka! I’m finished! Followed by revisions. Another Eureka! Followed by more revisions. I’m finished! Yet more revisions. Mercifully, I “finished” my book. But will I stop buying, reading and shelving books I love? Get serious.

As Orson Wells said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” Does this story end happily? Let’s see. Almost 2000 books donated equals Thrilled. Thwarted expectation equals Frustrated. Assumption reboot equals I-don’t-need-a-crystal-ball-to-see-another-cull-in-my-future. Thrilled plus Frustrated minus Crystal Ball equals A Philosophical Shrug.

The End.