John and Belle are sorting out their books and so are we.
We've got a crap load of books. I don't think that our collection numbers in the thousands like Jacob Levy's (see the comments on J&B), but it's big. Two dissertations will do that.
Steve owns like every Nazi and fascist book ever written. The CIA has probably been monitoring his activities ever since the New York Public Library notified them about his book reading habits. Hope we never have to buy fertilizer in bulk.
Back in New York City, we lined the hallway with bookshelves. Stuff just got tossed on the shelves for years. Sorting through them in that tight space was too much, so there has never been a decent purge of the dreck. The good and the bad came with us to New Jersey and only now do we have the space to sort through the mess.
As much fun as it would be to keep every book we've ever read as a trophy and to intimidate the neighbors, I think it's best to travel light. Never know when the CIA is gonna come a knockin' and we need to make a swift exit out the side door. We're putting the A list books on the four ten foot shelves in the dining room, the B list books on the attic shelves, and the pile to sell at the Strand in the basement.
Since Steve has no plans to return to academia, he's dumping a lot. Pretty much everything that he has no plans to reread for fun. Oddly, his collection of fun books still includes a large selection of books on fascism.
We're dumping old, fragile paperbooks even if they're classics. Good-bye Gulliver's Travels.
Passing stray interests in astrology and bonsai trees. So long.
Old textbooks and freebies from the publishers are gone.
And, yes, nice looking books have priority. Large art books are in, except if they were produced for Barnes and Nobles bargain section. Pretty covers make the A team. If the covers have a red accent and match the furniture, they're a sure thing.
Since I'm going back to academia in the fall, I'm keeping just about all of the political science books. Almost all the theory books are staying, because you never know when you're going to need the Leviathan. The books on the Presidency and Congress stay, because I'll definitely need them. I really want to dump the policy books, because they're almost all dated, poorly written, and too narrow in scope. The only good education books are written by historians, like Diane Ravitch and Tyack and Cuban. Ravitch is going on the A book shelves; everything else is going to the attic.
If I ever really close the door on academia, I would cut out 3/4rd of the pol. sci. books. So few are page turners. I would probably keep Machiavelli to Marx, V.O. Key's Southern Politics, maybe Richard Neustadt, and maybe 20 or 30 others. Things that I would be likely to reread even if wasn't scrounging for a footnote.
We're marching up and down the stairs with armfuls of books and tossing them up on the 10 feet Billy bookshelves. No categories or systems have been set up for the individual shelves. Books that would normally have no business next to each other are deep in conversation. Dave Eggers is talking religion with Dante, and Locke is learning about New York society from Edith Warton.
With all the sorting and chatting between the odd bedfellows, I'm rediscovering old favorites. Kristin Lavransdatter
Speaking of Empire Falls
