I come from a family of big
readers and big book hoarders, as does my husband. Every time we moved house
more and more of our boxes were full of books. When we visited our parents, we
came away with more books from our childhood. We accumulated hundreds of books
while at University- some were required reading but the majority came from the
magical second-hand bookshops in Edinburgh, favourite haunts of ours during our
student days. At Christmas and birthdays we gave each other books, we asked
relatives for books. When we started our family, piles of children’s books
began to accumulate too, as presents and bought from charity shops. We were
also then given the 'legacy' books, those that had been kept by previous
generations for us to have. Still only in our mid-twenties we already had
hundreds and hundreds of books in our home and more in boxes still to collect.
Something had to change or we
were never going to be able to live the life we want to. Our books, while
stimulating and much loved, also had the potential to hold us back and weigh us
down and we did not want that to happen.
So we started to get rid of
them- shelf by shelf, box by box. Each time we slimmed them down the out pile
went straight in the car for the next charity shop run. We sifted through the
keep piles at least two or three times over the few months before we left the
UK, each time managing to get rid of more. My husband's grandparents had very
kindly agreed to let us store some belongings in their attic and both they and
my mother-in-law assured us that there was no need to get rid of books. They
were aghast that we were even considering it. To have huge piles of books
getting damp in an attic for us to deal with in the future? No thanks. I'd much
rather give them to charity, let the charity earn some money and release them
for future readers.
It was an emotional process
and some we did choose to keep- our very favourites, some of my husband's
beautiful photography books and a few that we loved and could not be replaced.
The legacy ones? Unless we truly loved them ourselves and not because we felt
we should- out they went. It felt great.
Now that we're thousands of
miles away, I don't miss them at all; I just want to get rid of more! Still, I
feel proud at how far we've come and no longer feel I have to be surrounded by
all the books I've ever read. We don't need hundreds of books on our shelves to
prove that we are intelligent or well read.
Somehow we still managed to
bring lots of books with us to China but they were all children’s ones. Our
sons are 3 and 1 and the Kindle doesn’t really cater for them yet! The baby
board books will go no further though; we’ll find a good home for them here and
lighten our load even more. Next time we live in the UK we’ll be making much
better use of our library cards and as for now I’m really enjoying my Kindle
and my ‘collection of new ideas’!
