The ones I will keep

As I reflected on my previous post, I started thinking about the books that I will never give up. What makes them shelf-worthy? This isn’t a list of my favorite books. Some of the reasons I would keep books are purely sentimental: books that I read as a child or, later, books that opened my reading (and sometimes myself) to adulthood. 

  • my childhood Roald Dahl collection
  • my high school copy of The Great Gatsby. I kept it through undergrad and highlighted so many times in so many colors that to read it again, I think I’ll have to get a new copy. Maybe one of those beautiful Penguin classics. 
  • My William Faulkner collection. I don’t have all of his books, although it’s pretty close. Some day I will have them all and I won’t get rid of those either. Reading Faulkner for me is like listening to Charlie Parker - there is always a moment when I think Holy shit, I didn’t know that could be done. Beautifully.
  • Just about anything I have by Joan Didion. If I had to choose it would be my copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem that I bought at a used bookstore in London on my honeymoon (you know you’ve married the right man when he’ll travel to another country with you to go into used bookstores to buy American authors) and The White Album (of course).
  • Ulysses
  • Infinite Jest
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I have so many of his books but I would choose this one for sentimental reasons.
  • On the Road (also for sentimental reasons)
  • From Here to Eternity by James Jones because it will always remind me of Bill and Pat.
  • My Norton anthologies. I have a few from undergrad and there is just so, so much in these texts.
  • My Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor collections from Library of America

I may be missing some. I know it would be hard to part with my old Granta magazines but I think I could if I had to.

I know this list will say a lot about me. There are no rare gems here - all blockbusters (but maybe they’re that way for a reason). No matter, these are the ones that mean the most to me.