The Tingle

This summer I am struggling with the long-dreaded process of shrinking my personal library for a move, perhaps before the year is out, to a condo. The decisions — and I must make some 5,000 of them — are agonizing. How does one decide which books to keep and which to give away or try to sell?

It's not as easy as keeping the books I haven't read and sacrificing those I have read. Some of those I haven't read I realize I really don't want to read or will never get around to reading even if I would like to read them.  Meanwhile many of those I have read I cannot bear to part with,  even if I know I will never read them again. Like certain family photos, they are treasures that will stick with me emotionally as long as I stick around, and I would like them with me physically as well.

Sometimes the choices are easy. Usually not so much. The decision often comes down to what I call The Tingle.

Certain books, and not necessarily the best books, give me this tingle, an emotional feeling that seems to run throughout my body when I see or even think about a particular book. Even unread books can produce this tingle, even if it's not as strong as with certain books I have read. J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, to cite one example, gives me a big-time tingle, both because of when I read it in college and when I read it again just a few years ago.

The source of this tingle is usually a fond memory of the book itself, but it can also be the circumstances of reading the book, a review I wrote about it or the person who gave the book to me years ago. I can feel a tingle about books I purchased in Europe and on other trips or even some books that have particularly attractive covers. Fiction seems to be more tingly than nonfiction, though there are plenty of exceptions.

My David Baldacci novels will go. Not much tingle there, although I do enjoy his books. Larry McMurtry and Alice Hoffman are another matter. They stay. Same with John Steinbeck, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Graham Greene, Ann Patchett and many others. I'm keeping Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, but my other Evan S. Connell novels have already been discarded. I'm parting with all my Lawrence Saunders and A.J. Cronin novels, even though a few them produce at least a little tingle.

I still don't know what to do with Peter Devries, Agatha Christie and so many others. So far I have removed only about 500 books from my collection, or about 10 percent. The choices keep getting tougher. I must follow The Tingle.