Friday 23 September 2016

To keep or not to keep ...


... I'm referring to books. Three years ago DH removed all of my books from the three expansive bookcases lined up in our hallway and dumped them unceremoniously on the kitchen floor to make room for a monster of a model boat he'd inherited.

Three years later and my books, which scattered to the 4 corners of the house as a consequence, remain gathering dust and feeling unloved. Admittedly, the children's encyclopaedias, bought in the nineties, are a tad out of date and the volumes of science books merely hinted at the imminent likelihood of mobile phones ( the size of bricks no doubt) . The literature texts are as valid now as they ever were Shakespeare will be relived to hear but I'm wondering whether the Ideal Homes Book of Soft Furnishings with its lavish photographs of swags and festoon blinds ( remember them ? ) should be consigned to the bin or made into ironic greetings cards.

Decision made. They're all off to the charity shop. I do all my research on the internet now, once read, I pass on fiction to friends and I never will get around to reading , let alone understanding anything Stephen Hawking has ever written . The Dorling Kindersley Book of Trucks was a passing whim for my boys and as for that ruddy Times Atlas of the World which was impossibly outsized for any bookshelf I've ever owned, I will be glad to get shot of it.

I can't quite bring myself to chuck out my Mary Berry cookery books though so they will have to find a niche in the kitchen . Some things are, after all , sacred.





Box one of about fifty. The irony of the title of a book wedged over on the right hand side was not lost on me - Don't Throw it Away - was it trying to tell me something ?



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