Tomorrow the contents of the box full of my old travel guidebooks will probably be on the curb. It will be a sensible decision – I will probably never visit these countries again, and in an unlikely event that I do, they will be hopelessly obsolete.
Still, that makes me sad. I never buy souvenirs, and photos and memories is all that’s left – and those books with their names of strange hostels, guesthouses and restaurants, and my notes in them are what could keep them fresh.
I feel a bit melancholic for the rest of my books, too. I like to keep them after reading because they remind me of the worlds I’ve been in while I read them. I will never re-read them, and the place we’d be moving to will not have space for them all – so those of them that I cannot individually explain why we’d keep them will probably end up meeting the same fate. Keeping them around is simply not sensible and contributes to clutter.
tinfoilparachute 