The Camera My Mother Gave Me
I am buying my childhood home. My mother has passed and my father has remarried a wonderful woman for whom he bought a new place, a place for them to make their own. It is good for him to leave walls saturated with memories of my mother and her influence, but I didn’t want the house my parents built in 1986 gone forever. My dad packed the things that were most important to him and is leaving behind things that were just filler (I’m getting a new comfy couch from my Bonus Mom I’m super excited about). My mom had a lot of filler.
Since I’m the book lady, he left me most of their books as well. I already have well over 5,000 volumes in my house (I quit counting long ago and just focus on making sure they all have a place to live) and I have four children that I will be moving into a home built for a family of four total (it’s the same size as my current home, but actually has one more room, there was a lot of wasted space in these 1995 builds). So as I go through books, determining what to keep and what to purge, I’m stumbling through decades of reading–my mother’s reading, and my own.
The Christian prairie romances went first. I’ve never been interested in that genre, but it was my mother’s primary reading (I added some to the church library and sent some to be sold at Good Oil Days). I’ve gotten rid of most of the Christmas books, she loved anything Christmas. My church does a holiday market every year where they sell Christmas crafts, decor, and gifts to raise money for various things we cannot afford to do as a congregation. This last year we replaced the doors. The old building was desperate for functioning doors with no cracks or blemishes and the Christmas market afforded us beautiful, but simple, wooden doors to invite the public into our home away from home. My mother would be pleased that she contributed to that. I’m excited to keep the antiques, they aren’t valuable but they are titles we will read and share with our children. There’s a set of Mark Twain I remember well that I’ll “inherit.”
With all this sorting and purging going on at my Dad’s house (soon to be my house), I’m sorting and purging from my own home as well. Books I loved in my twenties just don’t mean the same to me now that I am a mother of four. When we first moved to this house my goal was to make sure there were never stacks of books anywhere (I failed), that every book had its own place on the shelf (I failed big time). I spent the last four years donating anything I read that I had no intention of reading again, mostly books I had acquired for free or cheap over the years that upon finally reading didn’t live up to my latest standards. But now, I’m getting rid of books I loved and just don’t need or want lying around for children to encounter.
So this week I donated The Camera My Mother Gave Me and Girl, Interrupted (and four bags of other things I can’t recall). I loved Girl, Interrupted when I first read it. I think I was nineteen at the time. Susanna Kaysen fascinated me with her angst, her institutionalization, her ambivalence, and finally her resolve… to not be crazy. I respected her final conclusion. At forty-one, I just don’t need that affirmation from her anymore… that we can be surrounded by insanity and decide to not allow ourselves to go insane (mental illness is real, but there are also some who drive themselves nuts out of selfishness and conceit, or giving in to their environment).
Later, when I was running the sociology section at Half Price Books, I stumbled across The Camera My Mother Gave Me. It is a bizarre memoir about Kaysen’s vagina. I was shocked, baffled, and completely riveted by the book. I remember being appalled that I couldn’t put it down. I probably would have kept it forever and maybe read it again years from now because I don’t remember much of it, but I don’t want my sons plucking it off the shelf as emerging readers. It would make an interesting story for a stand-up comedy routine–or their future therapist–so off to the Friends of the Library it went.
I have donated nearly 1,000 volumes every time I have moved. Often it’s a simple Marie Kondo moment, happily removing piles of things accumulated that I’m now happy to give away. This move hits different. Instead of just not wasting some box or storage space, I’m more focused on refining my library. I am actively curating a specific environment to nurture my children.
What books do you enjoy that you still choose not to keep?
Books I Gave Away
I may be moving. We’re not sure yet. That is another story for another time – and trust me, regardless of the outcome, the story will be told.
In these uncertain times, I am going through my belongings, and most importantly, my library. I’m consolidating, selling, giving away.
I haven’t cataloged every book donated or tossed. You would think the ex-inventory manager in me would, but honestly I find it a little depressing. But there are a few that have made some pretty huge impacts on my memory.
So here are the things I remember getting rid of (I donated about 100 books to the public library recently, if not more), and why:
Ramses Series by Christian Jacq
I read the first three of this series and then gave up. I owned all five. I loved Christian Jacq’s Queen of Freedom trilogy and immediately purchased two other historical fiction series by this world famous Egyptologist and fiction writer. I got annoyed with the Ramses series because it did not feel based in history at all, which is something that I find incredibly annoying especially for this genre. I’m keeping the Queen of Freedom books because I loved them; and the Stone of Light series because I haven’t read it. Ramses, on the other hand, had to go. A week after dropping them off at the library, I saw them perched all in a row on a shelf. It made me smile.
Walter Mosley Hardbacks
I don’t know how I ended up with these. I do remember them surviving previous purges because I intended to read them eventually. I thought it was nice to have a diverse collection. But the truth is: I like classic literature and I like cozy mysteries. I don’t tend to read a lot of run of the mill genre mystery books and these just never called my name. Not ever. They sat and amidst John Grisham titles from my childhood and collected dust. I’m glad to know they were not perched on the for sale shelf at the library – either they are currently in circulation or they got bought up quickly. That, too, makes me smile.
James Herriot
I think I mentioned this already, but goodness! Me, oh, my! I end up with so many duplicates of this fellow. Every time I pull a book from a corner I swear it’s a James Herriot duplicate of an existing hardback I have tucked somewhere else. They’re everywhere! I think James Herriot books may actually reproduce other James Herriot books – like plastic bags from the grocery store manage to do in your pantry – put one in there and out come five. No smiling here. Just sheer, baffled giggles.
What books do you find yourself purging when the time comes?
Anakalian Whims 