new year's resolutions

Last summer's move--and combining libraries with Kendall--occasioned a wholesale re-evaluation of my book collection. I winced in self-recognition, then, when I read this article in which readers reflect on which books to keep and which to send along. Although Kendall and I did cull our respective collections, we somehow still ended up in Washington with multiple editions of things like Doña Bárbara and Amadís de Gaula. We made every effort to keep only Really Useful Books or Really Good Books, but the biggest stumbling block came when it was time for the books to leave the house. Like dog lovers earnestly finding new families for a litter of puppies, we shepharded our discarded books to local bookstores and listed them for sale on the internet. A few trickle out from time to time, but because the market for medieval Spanish literature and literary criticism in Portuguese isn't strong, many of the boxes of books still lurk forlornly around the house, unwanted, neglected, cursed because they're in the way. But I have faith that they could be useful to someone, somewhere, and so they sit, mocking me every time I push the "add to shopping cart" button on Amazon.