Editing Your Private Library: Do Books Need to "Spark Joy"?

​My husband’s quest for a minimalist home is futile. He longs for clean lines, mostly empty white shelves, while I feel panicked and see the house as soulless if those shelves are bare of my books. While I do continually purge my collection, the liberated spaces are quickly filled by new acquisitions.

Having watched a few episodes of “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” on Netflix together didn’t help matters. “See? You just hold the book in your hand and see if it sparks joy or not!” While I can see that working with socks or spatulas, my relationship with books is much more involved and complicated for disposal to be reduced to such simplicity.

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