Very short, but nice read, with great quotes on what a personal library stands for. ( )

I truly dread dealing with my book accumulation after 19 years in a 2400sq ft house. I so feel this, kindle and all. ( )

This will resonate with anyone who shares Grant’s – and my – problem. When you’re an enthusiastic reader, you will, sooner or late, come to this point: ‘The books in alphabetical rows were overgrown by piles of new books, doubled in front. Books multiplied, books swarmed, books, I sometimes dreamt, seemed to reproduce themselves – they were a papery population explosion‘. When she downsizes to a smaller flat in London, Grant faces the physically painful task of decimating her library. Confronted with this literary mirror of her past, she remembers how she has engaged with books throughout her life and what having a library means to her. Funnily enough (or not, if you’re in the same boat) it transpires that a ‘library’ isn’t really that much about the contents of the books. It’s a time capsule, a record of memories, friends and events otherwise forgotten, an assertion of personality, (perhaps, shamefully) a display of one’s intellect (“I bloody well will read Herodotus / Proust / Camus one day”), a way to impress boyfriends or colleagues.

Grant has been a book fetishist (‘junkie‘) for much of her life. Those broken-backed spines and scruffy pages have been beloved objects. But now, as she gets older, she finds that the tiny print of her 1960s paperbacks is proving too much of a challenge. She finds herself increasingly seduced by the Kindle, with its resizeable text, its clarity and, joy of joys, its capacity. A library can now be in a pocket (assuming, that is, you can get the books you want on Kindle and, as Grant laments, that isn’t always the case). Far from shunning modern technology, Grant embraces it and she makes an interesting point. As an author, she knows all too well what it’s like to write a book and she makes a point that books are now written on screens. Authors bring their books to life in Microsoft Word, in a white, blank space. Reading the book on a Kindle screen is, perhaps, much closer to the author’s experience of writing it than reading it in a cherished hard copy. It’s a good point. A love story about books, yet also about the need to let them go, it’s a short piece that will strike a chord with anyone who’s come back from Oxfam with yet another pile of books, thinking, “Oh bugger. No more shelf space…”

For this review and other reviews of bite-sized books, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/04/28/bite-sized-books/ ( )

I understand

I relate a lot to this essay. I have run out of room in my apartment for more books. So I had to go through the books to be packed a way and hopefully find good homes. I love my physical books and wish I could hold on to them all. In reality this is not possible. I have decided to only to hold on to the books I truly love.
I have finally and with great reluctance have bought my first kindle. At 37 would of thought I would of jump on the bad wagon sooner. Their is something about a book, that made me not want to go about the ebook way. I do have to say that I'm enjoy kindle, for some books I couldn't find in print. Still working out how to find books easier if I want to just browse the book list (better sort and filter) Physical book will always be in my home, just less. For the writer will have to work hard to be on my permit shelf and my heart.
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(Nonfiction, Bibliophilic, Kindle Single)

When Grant downsized her living space in 2013, she had to purge thousands of her books from her personal library, started when she was a child.

Amazon says: ”Both a memoir of a lifetime of reading and an insight into how interior décor has banished the bookcase, her account of the emotional struggle of her relationship with books asks questions about the way we live today.“

The author is an award winning novelist and nonfiction writer, so this is a well-written and fascinating treatise.

4 stars ( )