A BOOKLOVER'S LAMENT

I'm getting ready to put my house on the market.  I almost put the "for sale" sign out last year, but a local real estate agent convinced me to wait and see if the market would improve in 2010.  I did--and it didn't.  So here I am, a year later, cleaning out my basement and trying to visualize cramming all the junk I stuffed into a four-bedroom, 3200-square foot house into a 1200-square foot, two-bedroom townhome. I'll be taking some of my furniture, selling off a few things, trimming down my kitchenware supply--but what about my books?

What is it about books--and I'm talking hard-covers here, not so much the paperbacks--that makes it impossible for us to say goodbye to them?  I've let go of relationships in my life much more easily than I can let go of a box of books.  As I rummage through the boxes, deciding which books to keep and which to donate to the Woodbury Public Library, I have to fight my natural instinct to put every other volume in the "save" pile.  

So far, I've come up with a couple of rules.  I can't give away any of my "collections" by favorite writers. I can't give away any of the old classics with the faded fabric covers. They are like dear friends: Imperial Woman by Pearl Buck. Katherine by Anya Seton. The Gentleman from Indianapolis, a collection of Booth Tarkington's work. Here Lies Dorothy Parker, her collected poems and short stories. An beautiful old illustrated version of Heidi by Johanna Spyri. The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. My mother's copy of I Capture the Castle, her all-time favorite book and mine too. 

And I certainly can't part with a very faded old book  enscribed on the flyleaf "To Babs, some of the recipes your grandma used to make, from Aunt Florence."  Babs was my mother, Barbara; Aunt Florence, my grandmother's sister, was the only one who ever called Mom Babs. The book contains many of my great-grandmother's favorite recipes.  

I was a reader from the time I first learned how to sound out the words.  Books have been my friends, my escape, my comfort and solace, my shield against loneliness and disappointment. It hurts to part with them, for sure. But they'll have a good home at the library, and soon they'll be best friends with hundreds of other avid readers who will love them just as much as I did.