Claire Messud, you read my mind: "I feel that my tendency to acquire books is rather like someone smoking two packs a day: it’s a terrible vice that I wish I could shuck. I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they’d just vanish. To be weighed down by things – books, furniture – seems somehow terrible to me."
I love my books; that much is obvious if you've been reading for more than a minute. I have a terrible time getting rid of them, even though I have really no room for them. It is physically and psychically painful to cull my library. But sometimes I really do feel them weighing on me, or, rather, my need for them weighing on me. At times, I want to just chuck the whole lot of them in a bonfire. I just wish I could come to some sort of equanimity between obsessive hoarding and blithe disregard.
(Via The Little Professor)
2 comments:
My problem is that I keep having to buy more bookshelves for my "library." Also, I wish I had more time to read more of the books on said shelves.
Storage and time are the banes of all booklovers' existence.
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