Hello Bookensians! (Bookends? No, that sounds terminal. Bookensians). I’m having a Dilemma^(TM) about my prodigious book collection and could do with some outside insight.
Background: arguably a *collector* rather than a **hoarder**, but I do have severe Pure OCD, GAD, PTSD and a fair dollop of paranoia – (mental illness: gotta catch ’em all!) Also autistic and get *very* attached to things.
I must own well over two thousand or more books. Probably about half are shelved, in a reckless and chaotic order that would make a librarian consider murder, but in exceptionally good condition. The rest are carefully stored in damp-proof bags under the beds. I do have ‘Currently Reading’ piles teetering everywhere, but I am actively reading seven or so books at any given time so that seems reasonable. Plus I like to potter around like some sort of wizard around his spellbooks.
Everything is clean and tidy, this isn’t one of those horror stories with cockroaches living behind the Jane Austens and seven generations of spiders slowly developing religion under the sink. That said, I’m running out of room, and beset by a sort of… social responsibility/moral imperative? I feel like I ‘ought’ to move some of them on. It would give me more room, it would pass on the pleasure to others, it would be good for the environment (which I feel strongly about) because more people are buying secondhand, it would be good for my OCD and most of all, ***I could buy more books.***
Trouble is, the very idea disquiets me immensely. I pride myself on owning whole series, being able to go ‘Oh, *that* Clive Cussler? Right there’ or ‘Slightly esoteric historical treatise on Anglo-Saxon stew recipes? Third shelf down.’ I like the owning as well as the reading. Furthermore, I am disconcerted by the wild seesawing of politics out there in the world coupled with the rapid advance of AI: we’re really not that far away from ‘mass edits’ and ‘curated reality’ via AI under the wrong leadership/political movement and that unsettles me (from Left *or* Right).
Digital anything is vulnerable; solid books can be burned, but not so easily altered. So I almost feel like I *have* to preserve them; a wee little island of sanity. Plus, people just treat books like crap anyway. It makes me sad to think of these treasured possessions of mine being torn up for an art project or just discarded on a train somewhere. Yes, yes, I know I’m anthropomorphosizing. I dropped a spoon and said sorry to it once.
It’s not about re-reading them. I almost never do; life’s too short. Nor am I a pure introvert who never goes out; I’m gregarious and enjoy being social and travelling, chatting to total strangers, chilling in bars, etc. It’s just juxtaposed against my dragon-hoard and ‘vault’ of safety and sanity away from a world filled with hurt and loss.
But maybe I could help it be *less* filled with hurt and loss if I would just **share.**
But, part of having OCD is not being able to trust your own thoughts and feelings. So whatchu think, Book Reddit? Convince me to start letting go, or to double-down and go full Smaug. Or maybe call the asylum and ask if they have room for one more. That’s valid too.
by UndeadUndergarments