This past week, I’ve starting packing up my things to move out of the house I’ve lived in for the past two years and into a smaller apartment closer to campus, and it’s helped me realize just how many books I own. I filled three 18-gallon bins and two smaller boxes with just the books from my bedroom, and there are even more books downstairs. Textbooks. Books I’ve brought from home. Books I’ve found at Goodwill or Value Village. Books I’ve liberated from book exchanges at coffee shops downtown. In short, too many books for an apartment. So I’ve spent the last few days making what I consider to be hard choices.

Every book in my house means something to me. I can’t read a book without feeling something. I don’t feel just neutral about them. I started with the textbooks and required readings, because that’s the easiest. Some of the books I’ve read for class have made me furious – like Paul Preciado’s "Testo Junkie," which I found to be an extremely reductive conception of gender politics, or Maggie Nelson’s "The Argonauts," which struck me as the kind of new-wave LGBT nonsense that would make my utterly practical lesbian mothers wince. Those found their way into the giveaway pile, but I acknowledged that they made me think in new and different ways first. I was happy to see them go. There’s only so much bookshelf space, and I can’t give it to books that have served their purpose.

Next came the Goodwill book collection. Some of them I bought because I was truly interested in them, such as the Stephen King novels I got for way below market value, while others found their way onto my bookshelf for the nostalgia factor. It was nice to make my way back through the books I enjoyed as a child, if a little strange. Sometimes I couldn’t imagine why I’d been so fond of a certain book, and other times, it brought back memories of the things I’d been obsessed with – the "Thoroughbred" series of novels served as a hallmark of my horse-girl phase. That ended when I grew taller than 5’5’’, and the books went on their way shortly afterward. The same thing happened to them again when I started sorting through my small library. I kept the Stephen King novels, though. I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow a good scare or two.

When I love a book a lot, I take it with me wherever I go. I can recall a serious, screaming fight with my mother over my current favorite book, which I was carrying around like a security blanket and which my younger brother also wanted to read. She had a hard time convincing me to let go of it long enough for him to read it – and he reads fast. Luckily, I’ve outgrown that particular behavior, but I still like to have my favorite books close at hand. It was almost difficult to pack them away, even though it’ll only be for a few days.

I’ve heard people say that you can tell a lot about someone by the contents of their bookshelf. If so, I wonder what my bookshelf says about me — especially now that I’ve sorted it out a bit.