Books I will never read

And I own all of them, mind you.

One of my best splurges ever was getting a built-in bookcase in my new home office when we did a big renovation a couple of years ago. Just look at this beauty!

I think I’ve read about 60% of the books shown here. I do periodically cull, donating or giving away books I’ve read that I don’t feel strongly about keeping. But there are some that have stuck around for a looooooong time. Like, high school long. (To say nothing of the dozens of books from my childhood, elsewhere in the house.)

Why do I keep them all? I could say because I plan to re-read them, but I would be lying. (I think the only book I’ve re-read by choice is The Great Gatsby.) I do periodically look to them for inspiration while I’m writing—I’ll dip in and read a few pages. Sometimes I lend them out. And sometimes I try to convince my kids to read certain ones. (This goes about as well as you might predict.)

Mostly, though, I just enjoy seeing them there on the shelves. They’re like old friends.

NOT that I actually remember the specific contents of most of them, mind you. Love In The Time of Cholera? Read it in my twenties and loved it. Do not remember a damned thing. Was there cholera? A parrot, maybe? Some love? Almonds…definitely something about the taste of almonds reminding someone of something. Cholera, probably. (I should re-read it, shouldn’t I.)

Middlemarch? Read it in my thirties, liked it quite a lot, but remember nothing of the plot, characters (I believe there was a Dorothea?), or setting besides general 19th century English-ness: tea, dampness, various types of carriages whose names mean nothing to me, and talk of people’s allowances. What (or who?) even is the titular Middlemarch? I do not know.

But….what of all those UN-read books on my shelves, some of which have also been there for decades?

After some careful analysis, I find that they fall into roughly five categories:

1.) Books I bought for purely sentimental, silly, or aesthetic reasons that I will most likely never read, but enjoy owning nevertheless.

Example:

I can’t remember where or when I got this beautiful, illustrated volume of Robert Browning’s poetry I don’t particularly care to read. I just know that my kids are going to have to figure out what to do with it when I die, because I’m not getting rid of it. I mean, LOOK AT IT! (It’s nice and heavy, too.)

2.) Books I fully intend to read and most likely will.

Examples:

(Did I purposely arrange this and other photos of books in this post such that books by writer friends of mine are visible? Yes, yes I did.)

Love me some Ian McEwan. (Two of his other titles are permanently on my shelves.)

Apparently I just won’t be able to put this one down, so I better time my read accordingly.

3.) Books I very much want to read in theory, but most likely won’t.

Sometimes they begin as category #2, and slip into #3. They make me feel mildly guilty. Maybe I should get rid of them. (But I won’t.)

Examples:

I kept meaning to read this when Obama was president, but for whatever reason I didn’t. I fear that reading now, against the backdrop of the current political landscape, will just make me despondent. Seeing it there on the shelf sort of makes me despondent, too. And now maybe you’re feeling despondent. Sorry! Let’s move on.

Ah yes. Bring on the tea, carriages, and dampness! If I’m ever in the right mood for them, I will read Mansfield Park. Along with Mill on the Floss and Bleak House, both of which have lived on my shelves for upward of seven years now.

4.) Books I 100% know I will never read, but that I still keep anyway

Examples:

(In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not friends with Emily St. John Mandel. I wish.)

I’ve started this one like three times but haven’t been able to get into it. I think, as is the case with some of my other unread gems, I’ve kept it because it’s “Important.” (It won the National Book Award!)

Or maybe I’m secretly worried that one day I’ll be at a writing event and get stuck in a conversation where some aging MFA bro says something like, “I mean, we’ve all read DeLillo, right?” And even though I may not have actually read DeLillo, at least I will know that I have some DeLillo, and therefore won’t feel like I’m quite lying when I nod along in the affirmative with everyone else. Also: since I don’t remember anything I read I might as well have read it, right?

In fact, yes. Let’s just say that I read White Noise. Didn’t love it, though, I gotta admit.

I bought this Emerson essay collection, along with Walden, in high school, when I was going through a sort of romantic phase and wished I was a 19th century transcendentalist / abolitionist, and could wear excellent dresses with lots of petticoats and ride in carriages and things. I did read the most famous of the essays, “Self-Reliance.” I will never, ever read the rest. But the book stays. As does Walden. They’ve made it this many years. What’s a few more?

5.) Books that have come into my life semi-unbidden

I can’t show you pictures of these, lest feelings get hurt. Sufficeth to say, I’ve got a hearty number of books that were given to me as gifts or thrust into my hands by friends saying I must read them, and books written by people I know that I bought to be supportive, but that aren’t really my thing. (No, no, no, of course not your book! Someone else’s! I’m *totally* going to read yours!)

Getting rid of any of the above feels like a betrayal somehow. And who knows, maybe I’ll get to them EVENTUALLY, right?

Yes. Right after Mansfield Park.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a problem to have so many never-to-be-read books on my shelves, except for the fact that I’m running out of space. Pretty soon I’m going to need to have a come-to-Thoreau with myself and let some of them go. Or maybe I’ll host a book swap party, as I periodically do. The only problem with that is…yes. MORE BOOKS.

And what of you, darling readers? Do you hang on to books you know you’ll never read? If so, why? WHY?

Talk amongst yourselves.

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