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Personal Library: Trimming the Fat

Why own a book collection and what does a personal library mean in the e-book era?

Discarded Titles

Cliché image of intellect: the book collection that features unmarred, leather-bound books with gold-stamped type, militarily symmetrical spines, and a musty aura of snobbery. Join me in the library for a brandy, the well-read intellectual says to his guest.

60 Minutes interviews conducted in front of a professorial bookshelf give interview subjects a subtle boost of credibility. Someone needs to figure out how these people can show off their e-book libraries.

Most everyday readers own a more personal type of book collection, an orderly or disorderly mix of hardback and paperbacks. Their bookshelves expose the essence and foibles of the reader as no other belonging does. At a party, I can’t help tilting my head to read the spines and judging what my friend or acquaintance is really about. My friend L. refuses to keep finished books in her house for this very reason.

Why is it so hard to get rid of books?

More Discarded Titles

My books have been with me forever. I move them with me from apartment to apartment and they reproduce like rabbits. Each new book-bunny becomes a part of the family.

Now our apartment is overflowing—four full-size This End Up bookcases crammed with books and vinyl records. Each shelf contains a combination of upright and sideways stacks so I can fit more in. Our 750-square foot New York City apartment hasn’t an inch of space to spare.

How can I ditch my old friends? Each book could cry out to be re-read at any time, or to be finally read for the first time. I have never finished Anna Karenina or Bleak House, books a reader is supposed to love and cherish, books I may have bought because they were on some must-read list. Ironically, How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler is another book I have that I’ve never been able to get through.

There they all sit untouched, with familiar spines that I find oddly comforting.

I pull a few books off the shelves. Honestly, I hardly ever re-read fiction books. So I start with fiction that I read once 20 years ago. Goodbye Anne Tyler, goodbye John Irving and Margaret Atwood.

I become more energetic. Goodbye biographies of Jane Fonda and Frank Sinatra. Goodbye to both Willie Nelson biographies.

Hidden in a closed cabinet with VHS tapes are too many small old-time paperbacks I bought in college. The pages are beyond yellow—almost brown. Paperbacks must reach a higher threshold before they make the cut. Out they all go: Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath, Rules for Radicals.

Dawkins was reprieved

Reference books and coffee table books have a lower threshold. I’ll keep The Story of English, Webster’s Dictionary of American Women and the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, published in 1988, a dictionary of a ancient history.

I think we’re done—with the first pass anyway.

More interesting than what I tossed might be what I kept: A Fan’s Notes (paperback), A Confederacy of Dunces (well-worn paperback), everything written by people we know, every book about chimpanzees, every book about writing and editing, Stork Club, America’s Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Café Society (hardback), every book by and about Willie Morris, Paul Auster, Tom Robbins and Eugene O’Neill.

I have also kept How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler.

Nora Ephron’s Lists of a Lifetime

Author and screenwriter Nora Ephron died yesterday at 71. Who knew she was sick? Who knew she was 71?

Nora wrote her book I Feel Bad about my Neck in 2006, which meant she had reached a certain age. What age that is, I’m not certain. Women start feeling bad about their necks at different ages, but most women eventually do hate their necks. Why do female necks turn into such tree trunks, I wonder?

Ephron’s body of work as an author, director and producer is massive. Her 1989 screenplay, When Harry Met Sally, may feel dated now, but back in 1989, the movie broke ground. No film ever depicted relationships with all their quirks and awkwardness so honestly. She wrote for females of my generation.

Nora’s last book, I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections, contains two lists What I Will Miss and What I Won’t Miss. The Won’t Miss list stresses the simple pleasures in life and the Miss list, the annoying rather than the outrageous (However, not missing Clarence Thomas may stem from outrage.)

The list sprung from Nora’s life, so comparing her list to mine is pointless. But I will anyway. My lists, just brewing in my head now, borrow a few items from Nora’s.

Waffles, definitely. I would definitely miss the infinite varieties of waffles. The view from my window too. I have a spectacular view of the Hudson River from my apartment. The sky, the river, and the Jersey skyline are a new color every day. I will miss that view sooner rather than later. Like Nora, I too won’t miss dry skin and washing my hair.

Technology would move from Nora’s Won’t Miss to the Will Miss list for me. I love technology and would miss it very much. Technology allows me to marvel at the world and makes me glad I was on earth before the internet. I can always be wowed by it.

I’ve learned, and so had Nora, that dinners can be excruciating or wonderful, but you’re never sure which until the meal has begun. You get better at sniffing out the potentially bad ones ahead of time. I would tell Nora, if I could, she should have never wasted time taking makeup off before going to bed.

On my Will Miss list: Nora Ephron.

Christopher Hitchens Lays Blame for Torture Policy

Dick Cheney and his cronies fulfilling the desire of the American people by torturing prisoners, Christopher Hitchens said at a Slate party Saturday night. If the Obama administration tries to prosecute them, these mitigating circumstances must be considered. In the nymag.com account of the incident, the public wanted torture. What?!
After 9/11, Americans wanted “a ruthless government,” Hitchens said. After 9/11, Americans were angry, but no rational person (in the general public) suggested throwing out the Geneva Convention.
Chris may have had a few drinks before he mouthed off but he is heading down a dangerous path.
Hitchens does have the credentials to speak about torture. He voluntarily underwent waterboarding, as research for a Vanity Fair article. He lasted about ten seconds and called the experience horrendous.
People have tried to protect the Bush administration’s actions by claiming the acts weren’t torture, but this is a man who accepts that they tortured, but wants to blame the American people.
When has the government ever heeded what the common people wanted and when was that an excuse? If the government listened to the people, the Vietnam war would have been over in 1967. Our soldiers would be home from Iraq.

I carry a torch for Milwaukee, the city I adopted not once, but twice: Once as a starry-eyed Marquette freshman and again, in October 2012 after a twenty-year stint in New York City.

I love to travel and I keep handwritten journals of my trips. A few of these diaries live on the Moon Fun City blog, a chronicle of my travels and of city life.

I am dedicated to animal rescue. I volunteered at Animal Haven in SoHo and for the Mayor’s Alliance for Animals in New York. My husband Gene have adopted two dogs and a cat.

Personal Library: Trimming the Fat

Why is it so hard to get rid of books?

Nora Ephron’s Lists of a Lifetime

Christopher Hitchens Lays Blame for Torture Policy

Kunichika woodblock print

Flamingos, Baltimore Zoo

Ruahine Mountains, New Zealand

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