Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart. (Mitchell, chapter 12)

I have a bad habit of allowing books to enter my life. No, I don’t mean to suggest that books are bad - quite the opposite. But I have a tendency to collect them, to let them pile up and accumulate, until my office and my bedroom and eventually my whole house are nothing but stockpiles for other peoples’ ideas.

What happens then? Does the sudden accumulation of many, many books equate to more time spent reading? No, just the opposite, in fact, as that growing mountain of books becomes daunting. Almost like it’s thumbing its hide-bound nose at me.

More to the point, I have an excellent public library that is literally walking distance from my house - and at any given time, there are always more books there than I can possibly embrace. So why do I want to fill up my personal living space with them, when someone else will store them for me?

So this weekend has been one of my semi-regular book purges. It’s amazing how having more choices makes it harder to make a choice - and having just a few carefully chosen options within arm’s reach makes it much more likely that I will actually reach for one of them.

Posted on March 30th, 2008 by James
Filed under: Self