I realized while packing up my kitchen today that this will be my THIRD move in a year. Last year just around now I was packing up boxes at my mother's house to move into my Salt Lake apartment with Teaspoon. I remember doing the packing of all my books, thinking I should really get rid of some of them to make for less hauling and less taking-up of space. I remember carefully deliberating and finally, lovingly, placing a single book on top of the pile for Goodwill. After which I'm pretty sure I remember chopping off my right hand and throwing it on top of the pile too, because that's what parting with one of my beloved books had felt like.

I would just like to say that today, in a feat of simplification while boxing up things for this move, I (ripped out my guts and) donated not one, but more than two dozen hard- and paperbacks to the Santa Cruz Public Library.

I was never really all that enamored of Longfellow, anyway.

Comments

[Rio]

you're leaving? how terribly sad for california but how enthralling for you. good luck with the books there will be others.

[kerri]

I have somehow managed not only to have too many books to ever move again, but a bookshelf that weighs as much as a three baby elephants. It shall happily become firewood before I even THINK of lifting it by myself again.

[Lily]

Let me just say that if you don't move anymore for a while, you won't have to go through such book heartache! (we back here in SLC are dang excited to have you back!) It hasn't been the same without you! Good luck w/ your trip.

Luv, Liaz

[Dave Thomas]

Let me be frank: I hate having books. It's like collecting spoons, or Lladro figurines, only books are heavier and less useful. I won't re-read books--there are too many other books to get to. Why should I spend my life tending and caring for books when libraries and foolish book-lending friends (and the internet) are happy to do the work for me?

If I agree to help somebody move and then discover they have boxes and boxes of books for me to haul, what I do is pee on the boxes of books and then take a big crap on the person who owns them, and if I happen to see any authors or booksellers on the way home, I run them down and kill them in the street.

Long story short: I read a lot of cereal boxes and junk mailers.