Smallist

Books are heavy. Bookshelves take up valuable wall space. And there are public libraries that will let you read anything in their collection for free. Hell, they’ll even let you take it home! So what the hell are you doing keeping these things? Now that we have the Internet, you probably don’t need them for reference, and if you have a yen to revisit the DaVinci Code in 2027, you can take your hover-car over to the library, or maybe even download it, and read it on e-ink. So here’s a way to thin your collection without feeling like you’ve given up anything valuable.

And yet it’s hard to get rid of books. After all, a book collection tells a story about who a person is, and how they think: When meeting someone new, it’s comforting to see a few dog-eared classics on the shelf. An Ann Coulter collection, on the other hand, is a bit like Buffalo Bill’s moth decor scheme in Silence of the Lambs. And books signify to their owners as well: When we’re having an identity crisis or have amnesia, they remind us who we are. So lest the decision become a scene from Sophie’s Choice, we must make it as scientific and impartial as possible: weigh the book’s bulk against its merit in the collection. We’ll call that merit M-factor, because we need a snappy name, and it’s a combination of four components:

1. Sentimental value to the owner
2. Significance to the owner’s sense of identity
3. Aesthetic value — some spines look better than others
4. Value for reading in the future (because sometimes it is nice to peruse your own collection)

Let’s take a few examples from the shelves in the Smallcave pictured above, and give them a 1-10 rating in bulk, where Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit is a 1 and the Oxford English Dictionary is a 10, and a 1-10 rating in M-factor, where 1 is Stephen King’s It and 10 is a signed first-run copy of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past with a few madeline crumbs stuck in the spines.

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
Bulk: 7. Paperback, but the big academic sort that demands a hardcover shelf.
M-Factor: 3. Makes me look pompous. Plus, I’ve never really read it, and I’m not convinced anyone has.

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Bulk: 8. Another big paperback, and heavier than Derrida.
M-Factor: 9. Oh I liked this one, read the whole thing, even the footnotes. And I’d do it again.

Edward Packard, Inside UFO 54-40 (a Choose Your Own Adventure)
Bulk: 2. Razor thin paperback.
M-Factor: 4. I’m not about choose your own adventures, but I was a casual fan in my youth. I remember R.A. Montgomery as being superior to Edward Packard anyway. But these are fun to have.

John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener
Bulk: 8. Full-sized hardcover.
M-Factor: 4. I think it was a better movie than a book. Says to the world, “I read the wrong John LeCarre book.” Sort of like if you only owned one Bruce Springsteen album, and it was Tunnel of Love. But at least it’s not the copy with the actors’ faces on it.

Alistair McClean, Ice Station Zebra
Bulk: 3. Slightly thicker paperback.
M-Factor: 2. I’m not sure if I read this or not. I do like submarines, but I think if Ice Station Zebra enters my life again, it will be in movie form, on AMC, on a dreary weekend.

Now we map them onto the Cartesian coordinate system: (Descartes’ Meditations is a 2/8 by the way):

The farther towards the top left, the more chuckable the book is. The farther towards the bottom right, the more I should hang on. Here, the line x = y divides the winners from the losers.

Once you get your book collection down to reasonable numbers using this system, try to avoid bestseller hardbacks. They’re the least likely to have symbolic value later, since everyone will have a copy and it will therefore signify nothing, and they’re bulky. If you must read it, wait for the paperback or visit your local library. On the other hand, if you feel you must own a yellowing paperback copy of Madame Bovary, by all means indulge.
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This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Tips, Housing, Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.