I am someone who re-reads books. Multiple times over in whatever format I have them in. But I only keep physical copies of those I’ve read more than twice. While my kindle library is insane and I do read as many books as possible in e-book format, I love the actual physical form of books. The smell, the feel of the page on my hands, the weight, the stains from previous readings, the way the pages turn.
Fun fact: I read Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn book because the library had it in this tiny book format with vellum-type pages. And then I read the rest of the series because I really enjoyed that first taste, but I digress.
In 2014, we moved temporarily (for 3 years) to Canada and had weight and space constraints, so I couldn’t bring my entire book collection. I went through and donated about 2 boxes of books to the local library and then spread the books out on the floor to determine which ones would be coming with me. At this point, I had about 200 books in various formats and I could only bring a few.
In the end, I limited myself to a total of 6.
Six.
And I was right in my choices. Mostly. For the keen among you, you may have noticed there are 8 books in this picture. I bought two more books while there. I just couldn’t help myself. I needed to own them in physical format. for a total of 8 books. Eight beautiful books. (Don’t worry, between the library and my kindle, I was awash in books but these were the only ones I had physical copies of).
One of these books features in my upcoming novel. I’ll let you guess which one. Hint: One of my protagonists plays mind games.
What about you? Could you do it? Just pick six? And if you had to pick, what 6 books would you take with you on your journey?