Of books and memories

Michael Bronski's obsessions are not my own; however, I find much common ground with his Boston Phoenix column about the emotional and intellectual ties one develops to a collection of books. I can't recall the exact date and place and circumstances under which I acquired every book I own, but quite a few of them are associated, in my mind, with a particular time or place or person. My copy of Julia Seton's Pulse of the Pueblo is indelibly associated with the pleasant shock of finding it signed by the author, with the inlaid signature of her better-known husband, abandoned in a library book sale. My stained and shelfcocked 2-volume Norton Anthology of English Literature is likewise indelibly associated with the pleasure I derived as an undergraduate from the authors I discovered by browsing idly through its pages (not, fortunately, with the stifling boredom of the literature class for which I purchased it.) This means that a decision to sell or discard them is, emotionally, much like a decision to sell or discard that part of my life. As a result, the bookshelves groan and sag a bit more each year.