In order to save the overall emotional and financial costs of moving hundreds of pounds of books, we’ve been culling our stocks for the past few days. Today, I dropped off literally hundreds of books, valued probably in thousands of dollars, at the local Brooklyn public library.
It felt good and despairing at having done it. Books are one of my most treasured possesions but they have the following drawbacks: they’re heavy when you move, they’re heavy to store, and they rarely get re-read despite the best attempts at doing so. I’m now happily resigned to the fact that those books – cookbooks, technology books, fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, children’s and otherwise – will find a happy home in the midst of reader-friendly Brooklyn.
What goes unspoken about the massive drop-off of these books? Namely, the psychological attachments that will eventually become realized once we’re safely moved and I’m looking for a fix that only that one book can have. Canadian bookstores are well-stocked and seem to contain most of the essential books one would need as a citizen of North America but I do know that books there are much more expensive and that the VAT on consumer items is high. And yes, there’s Amazon.ca but my suspicion is that, once planted there, online ordering will become slightly less desirable because, well, I’ll need to meet people and experience my new environment in a very solid way. And going to the bookstore – particularly McNally Robinson in Winnipeg – will provide a small perch from which to shiver me timbers.