So. I said four or five, it may not actually be four or five. But I do take down my old favourites and read them (or parts of them) again. Munro and Saramago go without saying. And the Bulgakov, I’ve been thinking I’d like to read that a third time. Eco, Garcia Marquez, Faulkner. And Ann Marie MacDonald, there’s seven. The urge to hang onto certain books for me comes from the same place as the urge to collect art: I want to surround myself with beauty and brilliance, and be able to take pleasure in certain loved, beautiful things.

Now, why don’t we talk about weeding the record collection?

As you know, I recently reread The Master and Margarita, only because I realized I couldn’t remember a single thing about it. I always figured I’d keep the stuff I loved best (Richler, Dostoevsky…) so that I could take it down and have a nostalgic flip through, but that doesn’t ever seem to happen.

On the other hand, we have lots of books that are just plain goofy (does the New Canadian Library fit here?) but I think it’s fun to have them. Again, content is secondary, or perhaps primary but ironically so. The question I deliberately left open is how we would decide whether a book is worth keeping as an artifact.