The Test

Still scouring the bookshelves with a critical eye, I am judging the value of a book with some simple questions:

Have I read this?
Will I read this?
Will I read this again?
Will I be able to easily replace this should I desire?

This morning there were twenty-six unread books (ten fiction and sixteen non-fiction) living on my bookshelves. I managed to move five (all non-fiction) off the shelf to either sell or donate. Sadly, one of the purged books is Life Interrupted, a gift from Christmas 2005. The book is Spalding Gray's unfinished monologue at the time of his disappearance/death, and it also contains some of the eulogies from his memorial services in New York City and Sag Harbor. As much as I love Gray's work, Life Interrupted gave me an empty feeling -- then and now.

Part of my culling process is assessing a book's readability (or re-readability) by my reaction to it. I read two or three random pages, and if my reaction is higher than ambivalence, the book can stay. The few out-of-print books on communications, culture and popular culture I own were exempt from this process.

I head to Pittsburgh at the end of the week with one of two of those twenty-six unread books as my travelling companion.