412 Books

 

I decided to do a book purge. The wife and I have been cleaning out the basement, cleaning out of it 17 years’ worth of accumulation. A big percentage of my accumulation is in books. The vast majority, that is. So I spent all evening taking about twenty or twenty-five trips up the basement stairs with a small tower of books in hand each time. I stacked them here, in the dining room, for further classification.

 

 

All told, there were 412 books in my basement.

Not pictured are 8 “essential” books stored in the armoire in my bedroom, and a set of Great Books of the Western World, 56 volumes in all, a gift from an aunt, stacked exclusively on a single bookshelf.

About two years ago I donated 220 Catholic themed books to my local parish. Around that time I also gave my student engineer nephew 50 physics and mathematics books. And I’ve roughly donated 150 books to my local libraries over the past two years.

Adding all that up, it seems I’ve collected 896 books. I think I brought about a hundred with me when we bought our house in 2004, so let’s pin that number at 796.

Divided by 17 years, that’s an accumulation of just under 47 books a year, or almost a new book addition every 8 days.

In retrospect, that seems so exhausting to me. How did I ever do it?

The next step is to divide them into categories:

   - DONATIONS

   - MILITARY HISTORY

   - SCIENCE FICTION

   - RELIGION

   - MISCELLANEOUS

I’m hoping to donate around 75 percent – 300 of those books pictured above. A friend suggested reaching out to the “vets”, an organization that would gladly accept books of all stripes. I’ll get the number from her and call in a few days.

How is Hopper feeling? Actually, pretty good. Light. Light-hearted. Like that lead vest the dentist covers you with when taking X-rays. For the ones I’ll keep are the real worthy ones, the ones worthy of a second, more in-depth read.