Spring of 2012 began the slow, painful process of getting rid of a lot of books. My wife and I had made the decision to move. Our future was going to be a one bedroom white box apartment, not a multi-room house in the Suburbs. An in any case, the collection had long since expanded past the confines of the attic 'Man Cave'. Many of books had been in boxes for awhile. Technically those were the easiest to let go. Books bought on speculation that I either did not like or worse never read.
Many of these books were overstocks or remainder so the financial loss per book was not so great. Still, when donating about 75-100 books it gave me serious pause. The money spent was never an issue it was the realization that I had a lot more to purge. The second wave would need to be a ruthless Stalin-like purge.
The details of that purge are unnecessary (surprisingly a bit painful), but at the end some 350 books were subtracted from The Hungry Detective Collection. What remained was the core: Atkins, Burke, Connelly, Crais, King, Lehane, Pelecanos. These precious few went into storage, until the move west.
Comments