A sad chapter in the quest to discard books

What to cast aside — the read or the unread?

As usual, Oscar Wilde said it best: “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” I cling to this comforting aphorism after failing, during a recent vacation, to follow through on a to-do list that included purging the house of surplus reading material.

How, after all, does one decide which books to discard or donate? Which criteria apply to such a literary cull? Surely this should be easy, a First World problem if ever there was one?

I could, I suppose, start with books that have been a struggle to read for years — you know, the ones where you read a chapter before setting it aside. I can’t count the number of times I have pledged to restart and — this time, finally — finish Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three, or Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Time to admit defeat? Not yet.

I could also revisit the unread works. Perhaps 40 per cent of our home collection has not yet been opened: bargain acquisitions, gifts, some “duty” books we keep meaning to crack but haven’t. Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, Adam Shoalts’s Alone Against the North. Should I donate from among these lonely castaways, brushing aside a potential treasure trove of stories and knowledge not yet attained? Difficult.

A much worse conundrum is books we have read. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Portrait of a Lady, Life and Fate, Cyrano de Bergerac — how could one possibly part with these jewels? I discover both a paperback and a hard copy of The Fountainhead; is this duplication necessary? Apparently.

Surely this should be easy, a First World problem if ever there was one.

And why are there so many Bibles lying about? We’re not religious, but no one throws out a Bible. Same for copies of the Qur’an, The Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad- Gita.

Then there’s the travel and adventure reading — the vivid prose of Paul Theroux, belly laughs with Bill Bryson, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Gathering dust in the basement is a 30-year-old collection of Michelin Green Guides. And do we still actually own two different editions of The Real Guide, Italy?

Surely self-help books have had their day. Who really follows this stuff, anyway? But what if I forget the memes from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit? Or chess hero Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning?

There are nostalgia books. An outdated highschool physics text from a class I loved, or my university favourite, a now-disintegrating copy of Les Grandes étapes de la civilization française.

Can we at least dump some political biography? I work in Ottawa, so, um, no.

Reference works, surely? You just never can tell when you will need a handbook on electrical circuitry from the 1960s, or a 20-year-old copy of The Complete Home Wellness Handbook. And the entire Will and Ariel Durant Story of Civilization series inhabits a dusty shelf behind a basement wine rack.

It gets worse. I have also acquired numerous audio books on CD for my frequent road trips. I will never again listen to The End of Your Life Book Club, or A Thousand Splendid Suns, or Leaving Time, but hearing a book read aloud is so evocative, so lush, such good companionship during lone travel, it would be flagrant disloyalty to part with these.

I know what you’re thinking: “Don’t these people own an e-reader of some sort?” Yes, but that’s irrelevant: We still acquire hardcovers, softcovers, second-hand tomes, review copies. It just happens.

One day, perhaps, someone will break in, fail to find any valuables (since we obviously have traded them all for reading material), and steal my Spider Robinson or rob us of Ian Rankin. We need a book burglar.

Speaking of which, I still haven’t read The Book Thief. But it is sitting on the coffee table, staring tantalizingly back at me. I just might pick it up. On my next vacation.