Holiday reading

Step into my other sitting room/study/emergency-bedroom-when-eldest-son-returns-home.

This is just part of my collection of books. Many of them I've read, but some have remained unread for so long I don't want to read them any more.

Which brings me to job number one of my holiday, which starts tonight (hurrah!). I have to prune my collection ruthlessly.

It's not as easy as it looks. I have a passion for books that runs so deep that even a dog-eared 1970s copy of Alistair Cooke's America, which I have never read cover-to-cover and probably never will, becomes a treasured possession once the grim reaper of the literature world comes along.

I don't look at the Family Doctor book any more - scared me to death when I searched for diagnoses for pains in various places. But, you never know, it might still come in handy when I have a funny turn in the middle of the night, during a power cut, when I can't get web access to NHS Direct or the vast array of quack sites.

What about the novels? I've got Jean-Paul Sartre in French possibly because it makes me look like some French savant, not because I can actually read and enjoy the thing.

Never got on with Iris Murdoch, John Irving's too wacky, Franz Kafka too dense... but can I see them leave my house to move into the nearest charity shop? No. Well, not without terrible pangs of loss.

Oh, and those boxes on the right contain my ancient vinyl records, which I keep even though the equipment that plays them doesn't work any more.

They're even more precious, so pruning that collection is completely unthinkable.

Getting rid of Scritti Politti's Songs to Remember would be like severing my right arm, although I'm not sure whether the same could be said for The Dancing Did's And Did Those Feet.

Somehow I've got find a way through the pain...