Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

The teenage volunteer at the Thrift Shop grabbed another handful of paperbacks and tossed them in the pink plastic bucket, one of those with rope twisted into handles, the kind of pail that I always associate with the guillotine in films like “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Clunk. Clunk. Again and again that sound reminded me of the finality of what I was doing.

All the books from the last cardboard box lay awkwardly in the bucket. I turned to leave, but before I did, I grabbed one of the books and settled it gently and deeper into the pile. Otherwise, I knew, it would fall on the ground, smeared with engine oil and black dirt.

Getting rid of all those books, I knew, would hurt. I suspected, and I was right, that I would find a reason to save one or two from the ignominy of going from clean wooden shelves to others streaked with dust and chips of white paint. But in the end, I gritted my teeth and asked myself, “Truthfully, will you ever even LOOK at this book again, much less read it?” And over 500 times, that question came up. And every time, I whispered,”No.”

I left the Thrift Shop, a lump developing at the back of my throat as I thought of my books sitting there on the loading platform, steaming in the humidity as the afternoon sun bleached the blue out of the sky.

At home, I could have pointed to my remaining books and said dramatically, “These are the survivors,” as did a character in Roman Polanski’s book-inspired Satanic thriller, “The Ninth Gate.”

Books can carry deep emotional meanings. I found out just how profound as I started rummaging through my bookshelves. You see, I remember the very first book I owned. Jungle Animals, 30 pages long, with a bright green cover festooned with photos of broad tropical leaves. And, no, it didn’t go “Clunk” in the plastic bucket. I still have it. My father brought it home for me from one of his research trips. The day after he gave it to me, I begged him to buy me another one. “No,” he said, “You have to read this one first.” I learned that there was something quite addictive about owning books, touching their pages, being transported to different times and different places. I loved that feeling, that sense of transference and transformation, and I still do. Books are passports to a different life and diverse universes.

I recapture that feeling each time I buy or borrow a new book. Every question in life, I believed, could be answered by some book, somewhere.

So, given these sentiments, it is no wonder that pulling my books off their shelves, piling them on my desk, and checking their market value on Amazon.com and Abebooks.com caused much conflict in my mind.

What I saw was my life marching past me. In each of my earliest books, my name appeared in the upper right-hand corner inside the cover, my childish handwriting gradually metamorphosing over the years into the signature anyone who knows me now would recognize. Later, I stopped writing my name in books. But that didn’t mean the books became any less personal or represent any less the important stages of my life.

I started my gleaning with the 250 Italian cookbooks, the ones I acquired over a 5-year period. when Italian seemed to be the buzzword, the goose that laid the golden egg for publishers everywhere. Searching on Amazon.com, I learned that most of these books — brimming with photographs so dazzling as to stop me gasping mid-breath with desire — now cost almost nothing, a mere cent or 100th of an American dollar.

I’d rid myself of books in the past, when either I physically moved house or when my interests shifted axes and led me in other, equally interesting directions. But this time was unlike those others.

I felt like an executioner as I chose one book over another, condemning one to the discard pile, its future uncertain. I realized that I’d imbued these books with human qualities. But, maybe, in a way, books ARE human, because a human mind conceived them and then gave birth to them. Each book gave me something, something that enabled me to better my life or at least understand the world around me and inside of me, too. Gifts, that explains what books are. On so many levels.

Then to throw them out, like so much garbage. It hurt.

As I walked away, hearing the clunking, I hoped someone, somewhere, would love my books as much as I did.

The ambulance, the hearse, the auctioneer
Clear all the life of that loved house away.
The hard-earned treasures of some 50 years
Sized up as junk and shifted in a day.

Tony Harrison, “Clearing”