Sooooooo Many Books

I am drowning in books, cookbooks most especially.  In the past, I just built more bookcases, but I’ve run out of buildable places.  Worse, even though I give away about 100 books every year to local libraries, I still have more and more books and less and less space.  It looks like I am going to have to do what my husband keeps telling me I must do:  I’ve got to give away more books – lots more.

Finally, yesterday, I collected five big boxes and set to work on the shelves in my tiny office in New York. My office is a narrow room right behind my narrow kitchen – that’s my kitchen in the picture above – and it’s lined with bookshelves (as is the hallway, our bedroom and the guest room; our son’s room, the kitchen and the living room also have bookcases).  And where there aren’t bookshelves there are still books – on my desk, under my desk, on my file cabinet and in a pile near my desk.  Michael’s right:  It’s too much.  And the truth is, although I haven’t said this to Michael, there are books I don’t need and probably won’t need – ever.

So, I rolled up my sleeves and set to work.  I spent 3 hours “on task” and this is what I’ve accomplished:  I threw out 15 old magazines and put 12 books in a box that might or might not be a give-away box.  I seemed incapable of touching a single book without opening it and reading something.  And, of course, I couldn’t toss a magazine without clipping stuff first.  (I wasn’t interested in that Rose Petal Sangria when it was first published three years ago, but it looked pretty appealing yesterday.)

I’m about to hit the books again today, this time with renewed vigor and a dash more pragmatism, courtesy of the annual call I get from a guy I’ve known since seventh grade.  After catching up on parents and spouses, kids and work, he mentioned that he still had his notes from his college freshman English class!  I teased him mercilessly.  What was he ever going to do with them?  Why did he need them?  Did he think he was going to study them in retirement?  It all seemed so ridiculous to me.  And then I looked up at my bookshelves.  What was that 1990 datebook doing there?

To work!

Comments

[Rona]

I think we must be related! I just went thru the same routine...and actually succeeded in making room for a few more Bon Appetit magazines. Of course, I cut out pages of recipes that I'll probably never use. (But NEED just in case). The cookbook situation is out of control. I have been trying to be very selective but caved in at the James Beard House cookbook and tag sale a few weeks ago. I am the proud owner of 15 new books!
J'adore le site! And wish you every success! This will be so much fun for everyone.
Bises

[John Bennett]

Dorie,
I also have a huge collection of great books and when I go to estate and garage sales and find copies of special books I always buy them so now I am inundated with a collection of very interesting books i.e. Oscar Tschirky, 'Oscar of the Waldorf' books ( 4 copies ) 2 signed, Madame Toulouse-Lautrec's intesting 'Chez Maxim's' book ( 3 copies ), Physiology of Taste, Brillat Savarin, ( 4 copies ) with one signed to me by MFK Fisher, her 1949 translation, of course and lots of other great tomes. So I have decided to send them ( with their permission ) to my alma mater the Culinary Institute of America for their library. LOVE your site; I can finally keep up with you. John XXXX

[Mmm]

I'm so relieved! I mean, that makes me feel a little less isolated. There are boxes of papers (mostly), piled in our bedroom; they've been accumulating there for years. Every time I try to go through them, thinking they're so old they'll be easy to throw out, I compulsively start reading, which leads to several "seed piles" of articles I had meant, and still want, to read, insights once scribbled and forgotten but suddenly insightful again, bright ideas formerly noted and meant to have been acted upon, twenty-odd year old shelter and food and travel magazines, each with several bent page corners, and yes, old binders of annual conference notes, now quaint in their discussions of technologies long since eclipsed. What was "neatly" accumulated in just one box suddenly becomes several ugly piles. It seems to take at least four boxes of stuff thus gone through to loosely fill one box that can be hauled downstairs and thrown out. So I'm anxiously awaiting the entry that reports your success and reveals the secret behind it.