Reclaiming Space and a Mini Book Purge

I looked at it twice. I remembered exactly when it was written: April 17, 2006. But I hadn’t remembered that I had it all this time. It was a draft of Chris Ferguson’s chapter of The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition. Something was written in bold letters, in black sharpie, on the top page:

Happy Birthday Amy,
Chris Ferguson
P.S. Jesus Loves You

Over the last few weekends, I’ve been spring cleaning. While I was freelancing, writing Mike’s book, and working at StreetAuthority, my space got away from me. And I felt the need to reclaim some of it. Unfortunately, for me, this meant tackling my ongoing problem with books. Books end up being another one of my many vices.

When I started, my poker bookcase was double stacked. My political/history/finance bookcase was double stacked. My fiction/sci-fi bookcase and auxillary bookshelves were triple stacked.

Stray books could be found in every room. Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life and American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone sat on my dresser. Just a Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love, and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise was on my kitchen counter. The Given Day: A Novel was by the piano. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court was gracing the hallway desk; just one of the four desks in my house. And Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker was on the desk in the guest bedroom — alongside the scripts of Pulp Fiction, The Secretary, and Clerks. These were my “in process books.”

During the purge, I filled four shopping bags full of books, ready for resale to Half Price Books (HPB). Some of the purges were easy. At least a half dozen poker books were unsolicited, sent by publishers looking for reviews. And then there were the duplicates. I’m not sure how I ended up with two copies each of Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Empire and The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux.

But some things took time. Old books had to be searched to see if they were valuable. So I ended up keeping my 1935 copy of “The Class Struggles in France,” written by Karl Marx with an introduction by Frederick Engels. It was printed in the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” and still has a decent dust jacket and errata sheet attached. It’s only worth about $50, but it’s kinda cool.

I was about to toss my 1947 copy of “The Record of American Diplomacy: Documents and Readings in the History of American Foreign Relations,” edited by Ruhl J. Bartlett. But apparently this baby is selling for over $450. I’m sure I bought it in a used book bin somewhere back in the day. The only time I ever shelled out big bucks for books was for a first edition set of the “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.” (top picture)

I also had to make time for discoveries. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I was at HPB, trying to score a copy of Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. I was bummed that I couldn’t find one. When I was cleaning out my bookcases, I found a copy.

I’m not sure what this process will actually accomplish in square footage. And I know it will be short-lived. But it was time.