Sam Leith: My wife thinks it’s weird and ocd and not normal even for a writer for me to hang on to lots and lots of books. Is it just me, or is she right? (I keep many I’m unlikely to reread or refer to, either just in case or bc they’re a memory of a review/interview etc.)

My wife thinks it’s weird and ocd and not normal even for a writer for me to hang on to lots and lots of books. Is it just me, or is she right? (I keep many I’m unlikely to reread or refer to, either just in case or bc they’re a memory of a review/interview etc.)

I don't go quite as far as you, mostly keeping books I think I might reread or refer to in the future, but I do like Penelope Lively's take: "to get rid of many of them would be like discarding part of my mind."

It would be like deleting or burning family photographs.

I look on some books as a physical part of my personal history, a bit like photographs in that sense.

Same. She points out her photographs take up less space.

What is the point of a house if not to hold as may books as possible?

Same -- and I'm currently writing a book where *loads* of them are proving useful again, thus fully justifying what may have *looked* like a hoarding problem...

Yes, as I point out crossly there have been many out of print books that I’ve referred to for my new book…

To fend off similar challenges I deal with obscure homework demands with the line “We’ve got a book that will help with that: I’ll just go and find it.”

Oh I do the same. Last time I moved house the removal guy took one look at the shelves and said wearily, ‘ever heard of a Kindle?’ I want to downsize too now that P’s gone but can’t bear to have a really ruthless cull. (Plus they breed…)

We go live to Linda Grant "And I, too, have committed murder in my library. I have killed my books." www.theguardian.com/books/2014/m...

Linda Grant: 'I have killed my books'www.theguardian.com Books have always been Linda Grant's friends; they made her the writer she is. So why did she decide to murder her library?

Linda Grant told me she regretted that cull! "“It felt like I’d disposed of myself and my own history because I was downsizing. I felt a bit humiliated by it." From this piece I wrote about "book grief". Keep them, @questingvole.bsky.social !! inews.co.uk/inews-lifest...

Book grief is a real thing- its why I have stacks of books all over my houseinews.co.uk After a library cull, author Annie Proulx was bereft - and she's far from alone in her suffering, writes Susie Mesure

If nothing else they provide good sound insulation for party walls

That's a real reason we are putting a bunch more shelves up in our living room...

Thank you so much, I've always wondered where that quote about Henry James came from, and here it is in this Linda Grant essay: "Here isn't Henry James because I have never been able to remember the beginning of his sentences by the time I get to the end."

I'm not a writer, and so not as invested as either of you... but I can't chuck a book away. Or a record, or a cd.

Same - I keep almost everything because I never know if I might return to it for referral someday. I also like remembering why I bought/was gifted them.

Your lovely wife would HATE my house and my book hoard.

Just imported around 6k to new apartment. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Why so few?’

I'd say it would be abnormal for a writer NOT to, personally.

I fear your wife has misunderstood her assignment.

I think there's lots of ways to be a collector and some of those ways are fairly normal. People collect comic books and LPs and superhero figurines and movie posters and shells and refrigerator magnets.... if the goal is to mimic the average uneducated person then no, it's not normal.

We don't really ask the shell collector, OK man what's with all the shells?

I wonder what became of my copy of the first novel which Sebastian Faulks has suppressed...

Post