In my year-end post last year I remarked that the final months of 2023 had been “frantic.” The reason, as I’ve since explained, is that near the end of that year my husband and I separated, one consequence of which was that we both moved out of the house we’d lived in for over 20 years—which in turn meant I dove headlong into “downsizing,” some of it as rapidly as we could manage together before he moved to North Carolina last December, and the rest on my own, before I moved into my new apartment in February. Yes, that’s a short timeline for changes this big!

As a result of all of this, in 2024 my relationship to books and reading was unusual in a couple of ways. In the first place, as I moved into a 1-bedroom apartment, I had to confront a significant reduction in shelf and storage space, which meant, one way or another, getting rid of a lot of books. I know many folks online who are really dedicated book collectors—by which I don’t at all mean that they don’t also read their books, but they have extensive and cherished libraries. I have never had quite that relationship with books, more for practical reasons than principled ones, but I have always loved owning books and feel, as I know so many of us do, that my book shelves are in some ways an expression of my self. I also have many books that mean a lot to me for personal reasons, ones inscribed by my mother or my grandmother, for example, or ones that I picked out on my travels, or ones that I have reread so often I can’t imagine who I would be without them. Still, I always tried to be reasonable about how much room I actually had on my shelves (no teetering stacks on the floor for me!), and I regularly rounded up a bag or two to donate to the big book sale that raises money for the symphony, or some nice volumes to trade in at Agricola Street Books, both of which are great ways to maintain what I like to think of as the circle of (bookish) life.

Still, this kind of incidental and largely voluntary pruning is nothing compared to the process I went through before I moved, which was often both logistically and emotionally overwhelming, especially at first. It got a lot easier as it went along, and in some ways it even started to feel good as the burden (literal and metaphorical) lifted. It involved admitting that there were books on my shelves I was never going to read again, and some I was never going to read at all, however good they might actually be (sorry, Europe Central, which took up the space of 2 or 3 other books for over a decade). It involved confronting the truth about dictionaries, desk encyclopedias, the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, and the rest of our fine “reference” collection: nobody wants them anymore, including me, so their covers came off and their pages went into recycling. It meant carting bags of aging paperback mysteries to the Salvation Army and around 15 boxes of good quality fiction and non-fiction to the book sale depot. Hardest of all, it meant facing Owen’s books, which was particularly poignant for me because so many of them are ones I picked out for him over the years, for birthdays and Christmases. Most of his chess books went to the Dalhousie Chess Club, where he was a regular during his student years, though I kept Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, his first and favorite book about the game. I kept all of his beloved Calvin and Hobbes collection, and many others that speak to me of the child he was and the young man he became—more than I needed to, maybe, but unlike my own books, his can never be replaced. 

In the end I brought around 22 boxes of books with me to my apartment. I still sometimes look for a title only to realize I let it go, but mostly I think I did well: I cleared a lot of space mentally as well as physically. And in fact I cleared enough shelf space that I have room now for more books! I find pruning easier after all of this: my attachment to (most) books is just lighter. Sometimes I even put a book in the ‘donate’ pile as soon as I finish it! I don’t think of those purchases as wasted money. I want bookstores to thrive and authors to make money, after all. My wise sister pointed out once that a paperback is about the same price as a bottle of wine, and we don’t think we’ve wasted that money just because we can drink the bottle up in a single dinner party! And I still keep plenty: any that really hit hard, any that aren’t readily available, any that come with extra sentimental attachments, any that I think I’ll read again, or that I might want to write about.

So I started 2024 by clearing out a lot of books. The other change since the separation has been to my reading time. I don’t quite understand why, but there seem to be a lot more hours in the day now that I live alone! I have wasted an awful lot of them watching TV, and many of them idly scrolling online, and plenty also just moping or mourning. I think (though this may be just making excuses) that I should not be too hard on myself about these bad habits, as the past few years have been pretty tough and we are all entitled to our coping strategies. I make intermittent resolutions to do better, to use my time better; I have made some of these for 2025. (Yes, blogging regularly again is one of them. We’ll see.) However! I have had more time for reading, and I have sometimes taken advantage of it. I have especially enjoyed taking time to read in the mornings. For many years—around two decades, really—mornings were my least favorite time of the day, what with all the kid stuff (breakfasts, lunches, getting dressed, remembering backpacks and permission slips and other forms, trying to get out the door on time) on top of bracing for my own work days, with the non-trivial (for me) anxiety of driving in winter weather adding a nice additional layer of stress from November through April. Things were simpler once the kids were older then out of the house, but I never felt like it was a good time for relaxing: I still had to get off to work, for one thing. Now, between habitually waking up early and living easy walking distance to work, even on weekdays I can afford to get in some peaceful reading while I have my tea and toast. We used to end most days in front of the TV; I still do that, especially on days when I’ve read a lot for work, but other days I can settle into my reading chair, put on some quiet music, and there’s nothing and nobody to interrupt me.

The combination of chaos and quiet time over this time of significant personal change has meant that overall 2024 was neither a particularly good or a particularly bad year for reading. I don’t think that in total I read a lot more books than usual, though I have never kept count, so I can’t be sure. I read a lot in some months and hardly anything in others. Since this post (which I realize is probably not of much interest—sorry!—I’m trying to recover my willingness to just sit down and write what’s on my  mind) has already gone on long enough, I’ll do my usual year-end review of highlights and low points in my next one.