Ever felt like the day is stuck?
In times of mental turmoil, it's very much advisable to look into our own homes, our bedrooms and closets, our garage and storage rooms, our kitchen cabinets and the forgotten spaces under our beds.
In times of distress, it's very useful to clean up, declutter and renew, find old things you forgot you had and thus give yourself a nice present, get rid of things you don't use anymore, being thankful to them that you once did.
We own a lot of books in this house. The count might be over two hundred. It is the result of manymanymany years of hoarding. Both me and my husband @blackweed are book lovers. I found myself troubled by a bad combination of a thousand to-dos, a couple of hundred kilos of past clinging to my shoulders, and the voices of about a dozen people inside my head telling me that what and how and when I do things is very very wrong.
Busy hands are happy hands... So I started my mental health - declutter process. Just as a mental exercise, I sat down and perused the titles we own -a total of five shelves- and wondered which books I would keep and which ones I would leave behind, if I ever decided to downsize to a minimum.
Reason N° 1 for doing this: Self knowledge. Most of the things I've read I would not read again, and most of the things I have not read don't interest me anymore; most of the reference books I own are no match for the info I can find online, and, as for the rest, I didn't even know I had them to begin with.
Reason N° 2 for doing this: Assessing real importance. We treasure things, and the reasons why we treasure each little thing are enough to fill pages and pages. I rather have a book I treasure than five shelves of blah...
Dare if you can, if you are a book lover, book hoarder, book collector such as myself. Take this #challenge with me and write down in the comments what is your list of books to treasure and keep. Let's make a conversation out of this.
My Personal List of Books to Keep Forever
(not as small as I had hoped, but I am lucky to have many items I do treasure)
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- The Pendulum of Focault by Umberto Eco
- Baudolino by Umberto Eco
- Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- A Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
- Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago
- All 7 Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
- The Trilogy of the Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien
- Of Love and other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Hannibal Lecter Trilogy by Thomas Harris
And that's it. I can't find any other book I'd take with me. This is the most minimalistic downsizing I would manage. Still enough to fill a large suitcase. The seven Harry Potters alone would have me paying a fee for extra weight.
I hope this article finds you in the right mood, and at the right time.
An article I wrote a while back about book number 10 here https://steemit.com/etymology/@blankcanvas86/concept-of-the-day-grapes-book
I lost my track on you. So sorry. When I am picking on my routine on steemit I usually visit the blogs of my favorite writers here.
And then I get in touch. As you paused for a while I lost on my routine checking out on you. Hopefully you will write again and please, come and remind me to visit you.
So, here my list which also matches yours:
All of them are worth reading.
I guess I must try Haruki Murakami as I hear this name being mentioned a lot of times.
Thank you for your list. I hope you will have time to red Pirsig. It's really worth it.
I'm not sure if I'm back yet or just stopped by, I'm so glad whenever I find a comment from you in one of my posts!!
Happy new year, by the way :) I was out of the country to visit family and have been full of work since I got back, I have also finished a short novel and I'm using every bit of free time I have to give it the final touches.
The reason I'm not a constant steemit user is because puting articles in a nice format is greatly frustrating!!!
I cant promise I will read all your former posts although I would love to, but I'll try and catch up with your work as much as I can!
As for the booklist, Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance and the Discovery of Slowness I promise to find and read. I got a kobo ereader for Christmas and it has made my reading a lot easier!!! I've read siddharta and I think Neuromancer is in a box somewhere in my living room.
Murakami is sure to drive you into a world of magic :) I hope you try it!