giving it away

I have a lot of books.

Sometimes I think, maybe I don’t have that many. Five Billy bookcases full plus miscellany spread out around the house plus the two books lent to Neil (I remember you have them Neil!) doesn’t seem like too many. Then the insurance agent comes over to verify our policy and takes photographs of the books because, in his words, normal people don’t have so many books and if there was an insurance claim, he wanted them to believe me.

I see those pictures where people have arranged their books by colour. I thought I should arrange my books by colour too and looked at my shelf, only to realize how impossible that is. People who arrange their books by colour seem to have unicoloured books in which this is an easy task. I have books with multiple colours on their spines. Then there are the titles, authors, publishers, etc. written there, disrupting the chromatic flow. So I didn’t arrange my books by colour. I just left them haphazard on the shelf in such a way that I am always convinced I am missing some book and then have to spend twenty minutes going shelf by shelf trying to find it.

I think I should give my books away. I have a lot. Maybe having isn’t so great. I don’t know. Today they just sit there and make me feel heavy.