Shelf Conscious
I have a sense that mystery writers are supposed to live someplace that looks like the Addams Family house. There should be towering bookcases and secret passages. A bust of Edgar Allen Poe. A suit of armor. A moosehead (why not?). And books, of course. Overflowing everywhere with books.
I don't live like that.
My entire mystery "collection" resides on one modest shelf.
I believe we are guided by the shadows of past traumas.
For years I was an unintentional collector. I kept every comic and most every book I'd owned since I was a child. I was never a toy person but I had plenty of boardgames.
The thing about being an unintentional collector is I don't think that makes you a collector at all. If you don't know what you have and where you can find it, at best you are an accumulator. (You might even be a hoarder). The more I looked at my indiscriminate pile of comics and books and games the less I felt pride in my possessions and the more I felt possessed by them.
About a decade ago my family and I downsized from a sprawling house in the suburbs to a condo by the beach. This entailed leaving a three-car garage (stuffed with the aforementioned comics, books, and games) in favor of a 6x3 foot storage cage. I blocked out an equivalent space in tape on the floor of my garage, and anything that didn't fit had to go before we moved to the new house.
In preparation for the move I spent months giving things away, selling on eBay, and making trips to the dump. I had already spent a couple years reducing the comics collection -- and wrote a whole blog about it -- but our pending move accelerated the process.
We made it, just barely. Do I regret some of the things I let go? Of course. But for the most part, I don't remember them. Even when I see photos of my old stuff I don't recognize half of it. I'm happier with fewer possessions in an uncluttered environment.
I also like the stuff I kept that much more.
I'm still a collector, just on a vastly smaller scale.
For me, the key has been intentionality. I shifted from collecting for possession to collection for use. Backed by my mania for data, I had a pretty good idea of how many books I read a year, how often I play games, how frequently I re-read a run of comics, and guided by this I could look at each possession and accurately estimate when (if ever) I'd use something again. That made it easier to pass my things on to someone who will better enjoy having them.
The books that remain have passed through that fire of self-examination and emerged as things I genuinely enjoy owning. Which brings me back to my stark "shelfie," which is about as far away from that Addams mansion as you can imagine.
There's the Ellery Queen issue where my story "Teddy's Favorite Thing" was printed, of course. I'll rotate it out when I’m published somewhere else, but until then, it owns the trophy shelf. Then there's a collection of nicer trade paperbacks, and some reference titles. Finally there's a stack of mass market paperbacks. These last are well-loved and I think my favorites, given that they show their years and prove their words are not forgotten.
Not shown is the stack of books on its way to trade or donation (though I expect some books on this shelf will move on in time). A collection doesn't curate itself. I'm always moving things out (and recently sold off my entire comics collection, something I'll blog about later this year). With books I'm frankly not terribly concerned about letting things go. Many things I might have kept are available digitally. The books I keep close to hand are here in case I need a style check from Chandler or Macdonald or I just want to read some or all of The Maltese Falcon again.
Book lovers will charitably consider me an outlier. I get it. But I'm content with my modest collection, and even if I do someday move into that sprawling mystery mansion, I don't think things will expand all that much. I'm too locked-in on owning with intentionality. It gives me no joy to have things I do not use.
It actually stresses me out! But I'm always open for reading suggestions! Tell me what belongs on my shelf (and just saying "something printed after 1960" doesn't count).