How Many Books Are Enough?

Tiny picnic on the train...

It's hard for me to reflect deeply when I'm traveling - my brain is focusing on so many different things that it's hard to stop and reflect on it all. Thankfully, we have "stop and reflect" moments throughout the fall, interspersed with our adventures.

Coming home from this first trip, especially in my sabbatical-refresh mode, has made me reflect that I want to clear out the house. And so, four boxes of books went into donation bins today. Three garbage bags of random stuff went to Goodwill. One garbage bag went to the animal shelter (old towels and pet items we don't use).

Coming home from living out of a suitcase for two weeks reminds you how little you really need. And being away from home shows you how much in your house is distracting you from what you really care about. Also, something about the mini-size and efficienty of everything on the train has shifted my perspective. See this tiny bathroom? Perfectly adaquate. Even sort of elegant, if you ask me.

Now, we have a lot of books. One person was in our house recently and declared, "Wow - you must really like to read." And yes, we've read almost all of them... but do we read them a second time? Will we ever? Really?

I keep some books around because they remind of something. Or because I liked them a lot. Or because they were important to me once. But I will almost certainly never read them again. Hello, four boxes worth!

Years ago, a professor asked a class I was in: "what if you only kept ten books in your personal library: the books you really cared about and read often?"

Wow. In a world with Kindle, libraries, GoogleBooks, and cheap used books on Amazon, why indeed keep a copy of every book I ever loved in my house? Why not keep only the books that really matter to me close by, knowing I can find many others quickly when I need to? What if I only had ten books and everything else was a rotating parade of library loans, books I read, then passed along, and Kindle downloads?

But how could I ever choose only ten?

Could you?