Karl Whitney: Difficult decisions you have to face when the books pile up

Many books, on reflection, are entertaining but nothing more: You hold them in front of you and read, but once you’re done, you’re done writes Karl Whitney

There’s an existential quality to deciding what to do with your books. You stare at them with a cold eye and ask yourself: ‘Is this what I want to do with my life?’

A few weeks ago, I was moving my possessions to a house a couple of hundred miles from where I used to live. My friends, Eamonn and Neil, flew over to help me. 

We hired a van in south London on a Friday morning and drove across Tower Bridge before skilfully arranging boxes, a bike, and a guitar in the back of the van and heading north through the traffic-clogged suburbs of the city.

Most of the boxes were fine to carry, but the 15 boxes of books were, frankly, a nightmare. 

We struggled up a steep hill somewhere near Alexandra Palace in our overloaded van, but from then on it was something resembling plain sailing. 

We passed the house in Muswell Hill in which Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks grew up, then made our way through residential streets towards the bustling motorway system. 

We arrived in Liverpool, my new home, as the sun set over the Irish Sea.

Unpacking was a problem, though. Where to put everything? As the shelves filled up, I decided to buy some more. Even then, I knew it was time for a cull. But what to keep and what to send to a charity shop?

I’ve spent years haunting bookshops, retrieving the odd yellowed paperback here and there, piecing together a library that has shaped me as a reader and a writer. 

I’ve bought Georges Perec novels in Paris, John McPhee books in Princeton, New Jersey and Strunck and White’s The Elements of Style in Walla Walla, Washington State. All that shit adds up.

When I wrote my books, I gathered official publications about sewage and water supply (for the first one, Hidden City) and endless biographies of musicians (for the second one, Hit Factories). 

I have a collection of A-Z maps of a variety of British cities that fills half a shelf. What to throw and what to keep?

At first, I thought I’d keep everything: That I’d find a shortcut that would make it work. 

Perhaps I could slip books behind shelves, tuck them in here and there, or even pile them along the walls so they became a feature that people would comment on approvingly when they visit:

‘Ooooh, I like what you’ve done with the massive pile of books here!’, they’d say, as a column of paperbacks tottered dangerously above their heads.

But I was kidding myself. I needed to start sorting. I needed to make decisions.

Paperback books in the recycling bin

I’ve worked in publishing and seen editors throw paperback books into the recycling bin. 

I flinched when I witnessed those scenes, but suddenly, when confronted with the motorway pile-up of books tumbling from each box, it made sense. What if I threw them all away?

The thing is, I’m sure if I threw them all away that I’d just start buying them again. More realistic to thin out the collection.

Footballers’ autobiographies are a good place to start. There are very few good footballers’ autobiographies. 

Some highlights from a career that the player can’t remember but has watched on YouTube, some comments on other players and the managers they’ve played under, and, really, we’re done. 

The ghostwriter does his or her best. Sometimes a classic emerges (Dennis Bergkamp’s Stillness and Speed, written with David Winner, springs to mind) but often it’s incredibly pedestrian stuff. 

So, I chose to get rid of the ones I’ve read and to discard any that, on reflection, I’d probably never get around to reading.

I had found a logic that would shape my choices: Books I’d probably never get around to reading would go. Once I got going this accounted for a surprising large number of books. 

Many books, on reflection, are entertaining but nothing more: You hold them in front of you and read, but once you’re done, you’re done. 

Nothing remains but the husk of the mildly diverting read that occupied you for a brief portion of your life.

There’s an existential quality to deciding what to do with your books. You stare at them with a cold eye and ask yourself: ‘Is this what I want to do with my life?’ You look at John Giles: A Football Man and decide ‘probably not’.

And then there’s what you do keep. In choosing what to let go you were also thinking about what will remain. Some books you keep for sentimental reasons, others for the most superficial. 

I might never again read the first two volumes of the memoirs of Brett Anderson, lead singer of the band Suede, but for the moment the gold spines of the hardback look good on their shelf. 

I tend to collect books about writing, so none of those have left the building; same with specialist dictionaries of sociology or philosophy or architecture. They might come in handy, but I’m not sure when.

Karl Whitney: 'Some books you keep for sentimental reasons, others for the most superficial.'

You can see my conundrum: That I tend to gather at least a portion of my book collection as insurance against the future rather than for immediate use. Books are of practical use, but that’s not all.

Sometimes I’ll see a house without books and wonder how that works. It’s not necessarily snobbery, I don’t think, but more about me wondering how I would live there in the absence of things to leaf through. 

A portion of my day is spent looking at books, taking them off the shelves, deciding that on second thoughts I don’t need them, and putting them back. 

There’s a joy to being able to physically handle them, flicking through their pages and finding places you remember, sentences that stuck with you.

I sometimes recall where on a page I read a certain phrase and find myself searching for the relevant book. 

A book has its own geography, and, when surrounded by others it becomes part of a world or even a universe that you have assembled in your image. 

Once you begin to take that apart, to subtract from it, even subtly, you fear that the whole thing could collapse. 

It can sometimes seem difficult to tell where you end and the book collection begins.

That’s why pruning it filled me with so much dread, I think. Once my friends had left, I sat for a while surrounded by piles of boxes. 

I stubbed my toe on one box, tripped over another, and eventually decided that something needed to be done and that I was the only one who could do it.

Moving house generates reusable waste: Empty cardboard boxes that I gave away as fast as possible to others who would soon move, an assortment of plastic bags that had served their purpose carrying clothes and that could be now put to work as temporary storage for books that were about to leave the building. I filled up one, then another.

I paused occasionally to revise my decisions, retrieving a book that I was dangerously close to sending to a charity shop.

Ultimately there’s something bracing about making these decisions. You’re weighing up what’s worthwhile and what isn’t. 

You’re thinking about your life, finding the universal in the specific: There’s more to life than books, certainly, but they’re also a measure, or reflection, of your life. Some things will go while others will stay.

I’m not a fully reformed character.

A couple of days after sifting for books to give away, I found myself ordering new books online. Will I ever learn?

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