I was originally going to talk about one or two of the books I’d read over the past month here, but I’m going to push that back to the next column. Instead, I’d like to talk a little bit about something that’s been gnawing at me, and you can tell me if I’m off-base or not in thinking of it as a good idea.

One thing I’ve run into, increasingly, as someone who lives in a relatively small apartment and enjoys the tactile qualities of books, is space. This is something that I’m sure a lot of people run up against–there’s even been a term coined–’shelf porn’ to describe showing off pictures of your bookshelves with other people over the internet! However, I find that while I have about enough space to comfortably shelve about three quarters of my books, I’m left keeping the other twenty-five percent in storage, and have no breathing room–whenever I’m at a secondhand bookstore or the library, I get those guilty urges where I’ve the sense that I really shouldn’t add to the pile of books that may one day bury me. And on top of that, the odds are I won’t spend the rest of my life in the same apartment, so how do I address that when dealing with books–when it comes to possessions, and moving, books and bookshelves are often one of the more unwieldy things to deal with, somewhere just below grand pianos and garden gnomes on the scale.

One obvious solution in the past has been to give away, or get rid of, books that I don’t want or am pretty sure I won’t read again, that I know some people might enjoy more than I do. Sending books in the mail can often be cost-prohibitive though, and as the circle of friends I have grows more and more geographically diverse, it’s harder and harder to just drop by someone’s front door and say ‘hey, I’ve got this great mystery novel you’d really enjoy, I think.’ For a little while, I was leaving books in random places (phone booths, bus stops, etc) for people to find, (Why not read about the Spanish Armada while you’re waiting for your train?), but that can be time-consuming as well, and there’s always the uncertainty factor of whether or not the book will find a home or whether it will simply be eaten by a passing dog.

And then there are some books it’s simply difficult to give away. No, I am not sure how I ended up with those X-Files tie-in novels, but they sure are difficult, ten years after the show’s popularity peaked, to interest people in reading. A lot of the time these are the books that you see on the shelves of the local Salvation Army or March of Dimes charity store–the books people couldn’t figure out what to do with, so they tried to fob off on strangers with a clear conscience.

It is the horns of a dilemma I’m on, anyway — I could definitely get rid of a few piles of books, and I will let you know, gentle reader, if I figure out a way to do so. In the meantime, if anyone has any good ideas, feel free to let me know.