Posted by amy at May 2nd, 2006

My husband and I recently purged our home of over 500 books. We hauled them from boxes in the basement to our living room floor, and then turned our eyes to the busting bookshelves that lined the house. My dear, amazing husband, went through them individually, sorting, selecting and labeling them. I liked to think of myself as someone who collected books, I had all of Tom Robbins and Douglas Coupland hidden among my shelves, but suddenly my two boxes of feminist historiography was nothing compared with his many boxes on trout fishing. And as we laid them out on our driveway, postmodernism next to early Christian theology, lesbian detective stories co mingling with gun manuals, the tale of the American left was clearly under threat.

The local yard sale circuit was unprepared for what was in those boxes. More than one person asked for Danielle Steele, many more commenting, “You sure like to read” with one eyebrow raised. Our garage sale acquired copy of “The Joy Of Sex” went of with another lucky couple, and I only had to put up with one SNAG (sensitive new age guy) who pontificated about the summer he lived with two radical lesbian Maoist feminists who made him read all of Mary Daly. [I swear, I’ve heard this story a few times and if I ever find those women I’m going to burn their copies of Gyn/Ecology, and report them to the UN for torturous crimes under the Geneva Convention].

Looking through those boxes of books was more a reflection of my life than any photo album could be – each one had a memory associated with it, one that I could recall more vividly than the contents of the book. Our save criteria was simple: if we saw it at a used book store, would we buy it again? It was amazing how many fair books we owned and how many we were holding onto with no plans to revisit them. I was ok giving up my book about Black Communists in Alabama during the depression, or the oral history of working class lesbians in Buffalo during the 1950s – I didn’t need to the book in my possession to remember the heated exchange from my social history class where one less than enthusiastic student balked at the idea of having to read about “dirty rug munchers.” I found a new voice that day, and was actually able to sound more like a historian than a loopy feminist in my defense of that book.

I was glad to see Ahab’s Wife go off with a woman who chose some of my best contemporary fiction. Nobody took the Tom Robbins, or Douglas Coupland and at the end of the day, despite considerable marketing efforts, we sold maybe 50 books and the rest were carted off to Goodwill, who took them in exchange for a tax receipt.

Some couples golf together, others take tropical vacations. My husband and I look for used bookstores and libraries. And while he is off looking for classic gardening titles, I’ll be digging through the poetry section for a copy of Longfellow’s translation of Dante. I don’t know how long it will take us to build back our collection, with new genres we have yet to discover, but I am sure, in 15 years, when it is time to cull the stacks again, the collection will again provide more memories than a photo album.