I have a lot of books. They occupy all of the walls of one large bedroom (a room I love, by the way). I need to cull the library down to about half of its current size. Succeeding in this will require a much more ruthless approach to book winnowing than the criteria listed here.

My current criteria for keeping a book is:

1. They are by an author I collect and read. Examples include almost anything by William Gibson, Alistair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, Ian McDonald, Paul J. McAuley or Patricia McKillip.
2. The book is a computer science, math or finance book that I might need as a reference. I’m vacillating about some calculus books I used in Graduate school. Do I really need these? Probably not.
3. Histories that I might want to reread. For example, anything by Adrian Goldsworthy. Or classics like Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Romain Empire. Do I honestly think that I’m going to reread Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnese War? Probably not. It was a slog the first time. So sadly, this, and histories like it, need to go.
4. Non-fiction. I’ve already gotten rid of all of the books by Thomas Frank. I’m not going to read What’s the Matter with Kansas and his other books again. The same goes for the Enigma of Japanese Power, which is pretty dated. Stalin: in the court of the Red Czar was a horrifying read. Am I going to go there again?
5. I’ll probably keep the books of travel essays. But I’ll probably stick to travel essays on places I have been or might go.
6. Fiction that I have not read yet or might want to reread. Some authors I like, like Walter Mosley and Richard Price are probably not writers I’m going to read a second time. So these books need to go.
7. Science Fiction that I have not read (not much of this) or might want to reread. I’m probably not going to reread most (all) of Poul Anderson. These books need to go.
8. Art books that I really love. Some, like Maxfield Parrish, I think I may have outgrown, so they need to go.

Looking over the above list, I’m still worried that this will not thin the herd enough. Book collecting has been called A Gentle Madness. For those of us who amass libraries, there’s a lust and a desire for books. Like the dragon Smaug lying on top of all of that Dwarfish gold in the Hobbit.

The truth is that if I cut my library in half and read all of the books that I have not gotten to yet and reread the good books that I have, there will be years of reading at two books a week (I’m down to one book a week now, since I spend so much time working on nderground).

I’ve been hauling my library around for years. As the sands of time flow through my hourglass, this becomes problematic. So its time to make a change. For someone who suffers from the Gentle Madness, this change is hard. I could give up wine without much difficulty, but not books. As with all irrational fixations, it is a struggle for reason to triumph over the Gentle Madness.