Winnowing the Stuff

Part of our on again/off again downsizing is that we are sorting through the books. I'm tentatively identifying books that get to stay, not just avoid the thrift store box now, but maybe go to the ultimate condo location. I make sure these books are in my Access database and I've also started cataloging them on Library Thing, a site I found that is very helpful in finding the book info and also finding interesting things about books and people who own them.

Some of these books are now on a shelf in my office, nestled next to a cheap globe someone gave me as a gift a few years ago. Hence today's picture. The cheap globe is more accurate than a lot of the ones in my collection of old globes. But it is pre-1989, I guess, since it shows East and West Germany. I'm thinking, by the way, that maybe the globe collection can go to the new, small digs. Some decorative things have to survive. I'm less sure what to do with the four pocket world atlases I found. One is leatherbound and embossed with my name. Pretty up-to-date, too. One Germany. However, not perfect. It's pre-1997 and shows Zaire. Another has the same flaw but some compelling colorful maps. One is so old that it still has Rhodesia and Burma and has The Congo (sometimes wrong things become right again). It shows its age in other ways, too. A cover price of $1.50 and a copyright in Roman Numerals. (MCMLXX). The fourth mini-atlas was revised in '93 and has very readable maps and a nice binding. All four appeal in certain ways. And let's not even begin to discuss the giant 1970's atlas and the collection of maps and guidebooks. But we are making progress. A steady progression of paperback novels and other books are actually leaving the house. I feel for the first time that I'm getting rid of more things on average than I'm acquiring. Really. Honest. Books have been ebbing and flowing about the house in odd ways as himself and I queue some for discarding, move them from the other's pile to the discard boxes and, occasionally, rescue one for further consideration. A pile of literary magazines has taken over a chair in my office for possible donation to Badgerdog Literary Publishing. Of course, these old copies of Story and Paris Review are calling out to me. They are saying "Don't you want to read me before discarding??" I'm not answering, though.

Acquiring stuff is a strange process and discarding it is fraught with all kinds of emotion.