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A review by sydsnot71
I Murdered My Library by Linda Grant
5.0
This is a short book. More of an extended essay. But I have never read anything which spoke to me as directly as this book. It is about books. It is about what they mean both as objects and as the repositories of text.
Linda Grant is moving house and has to 'murder her library'. This is a process I have undertaken myself. When I moved to my new room from the house I lived in I gave away twenty-five boxes of books to a second hand bookshop that would take them. It still hurts. I still have hundreds, possibly thousands, of books here in the room I now live. Every shelf, cupboard and surface has books on it. The mantlepiece has books on it. Three rows of books piled on top of each other buttressed by two columns of books to stop them falling off the edge of the mantlepiece. There are 251 books on the mantlepiece alone. In most respect it is too many books. I'm an unhealthy man in his early 50s. I'm unlikely to read all of the books in this room before I die, let alone buying more books. Books are my comfort. Both as objects and actual content. Perhaps they are a crutch. They are certainly what I spend most of my money on. They are memories and dreams, hopes and fears. They bring me joy and they make me cry. They have provided me with a clogged up memory that is full of information that can only be bought out by pub quizzes it often seems.
That is why Linda Grant's book meant so much to me. It felt like reading my own memoir - but without actually being a writer. At least professionally.
It's a lovely little book. It's not on my shelf though. It is on my Kindle.
Linda Grant is moving house and has to 'murder her library'. This is a process I have undertaken myself. When I moved to my new room from the house I lived in I gave away twenty-five boxes of books to a second hand bookshop that would take them. It still hurts. I still have hundreds, possibly thousands, of books here in the room I now live. Every shelf, cupboard and surface has books on it. The mantlepiece has books on it. Three rows of books piled on top of each other buttressed by two columns of books to stop them falling off the edge of the mantlepiece. There are 251 books on the mantlepiece alone. In most respect it is too many books. I'm an unhealthy man in his early 50s. I'm unlikely to read all of the books in this room before I die, let alone buying more books. Books are my comfort. Both as objects and actual content. Perhaps they are a crutch. They are certainly what I spend most of my money on. They are memories and dreams, hopes and fears. They bring me joy and they make me cry. They have provided me with a clogged up memory that is full of information that can only be bought out by pub quizzes it often seems.
That is why Linda Grant's book meant so much to me. It felt like reading my own memoir - but without actually being a writer. At least professionally.
It's a lovely little book. It's not on my shelf though. It is on my Kindle.