The Joy of Books

I recently read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and I'm trying to apply it to our house. It's a slow process. I admit I'm not sorting items exactly as she recommends. Kondo says one should take all of a certain type of item (clothes, or possibly a subset of them), dump them all on the floor, hold each of them individually, and ask yourself if they spark joy. If they do, you keep them; if not, get rid of them. Kondo doesn't offer much advice on how to dispose of items sustainably, and she doesn't get into situations where two people in the same household have vastly different feelings about the same joint possession. Nevertheless, I've been using this method to get a lot of clothes out of my bedroom. (I plan to either sell them at a garage sale or find somewhere to donate them.) Once I finish going through my clothes, the next major category is books. Kondo got a lot of grief from book lovers for this, so I'd like to discuss her thoughts (and mine) on the subject in more detail.

If I recall correctly (I borrowed the book from the library), Kondo said that she personally tries to keep no more than thirty books. Somehow, people thought she meant everyone should reduce their collections to that number, and that's why there was a lot of articles about her back in January. (Here's one example by someone who understood Kondo's advice. And then there's this person...) Obviously, different things are going to spark joy in different people. Kondo may not be a bookworm, but I am, and I do enjoy seeing books on my shelves. Kondo, however, takes a very practical approach to books. She states that once you've read a book, its message is already inside you, and that you probably won't reread it. If you want to save a particular passage, you could rip out the page (blasphemy!) or copy the words into a file. While I do have some books I probably won't reread, I still obtain pleasure from having the physical book. I have purged some books when I get an ebook version, but other books I keep in both versions.

Although I've purged my paperback collection multiple times, this next purge might be more intensive. I also plan to examine some books that typically get a free pass, such as books on writing and the Beatles. We'll see how many books I ultimately end up keeping.