Victorianitas

I'm selling some of my books on Amazon. It feels like kicking fledglings out of the nest, although there's no reason it should do when most of these are books I haven't read for years. Some of them, I've never read at all; Sheri S. Tepper's Beauty has been sitting on a shelf for the past eleven years, but I've never got past the first few chapters. Giving it away feels like surrender.

That's the strange thing about giving away books, too: it's not just the books I like that I hate parting with. Listing the first thirty or so on Amazon, I found myself coming up with all sorts of reasons for why I absolutely had to keep something I hadn't read since I was fourteen and didn't ever really want to read again. Stephen Lawhead's Merlin hasn't been opened in years, but that didn't stop the voice of a book-hoarding demon whispering into my ear when I picked it up this morning. "Are you sure it should go? Don't you remember reading it in that holiday in the Pyrenees? The clouds? The flowers? The summer snow? And you loved all those King Arthur stories so much? But fine, if that means nothing to you, just you go ahead and sell all your memories and your fourteen-year-old self on Amazon for £1.25..." The voice in my other ear keeps whispering about overdrafts and bookshelf space, but that's just nowhere near as romantic.