I may have written on this subject before but I just read something that made me think about it all over again – which books would you save if you had to run for your life? The author of that particular article was fleeing the January 2025 fires in LA, running for her life. She said, “I have thousands of books… I took seven.” Seven irreplaceable ones.
So I too have thousands of books. WHich ones would I take…?
The irreplaceable ones. Let’s limit myself to those seven.
1. if I couldn’t take them all, then at least one of the seven volumes of my grandfather’s published poetry. Probably the silly one for kids, the one in which there are poems that name me and my cousin, the ones he wrote for us, about us, when we were little and he was a new grandpa. The one that he signed for me, later, when I was more grown. I don’t necessarily even look at those kiddie poetry collections any more (there are actually four of them) but just knowing that they are there makes my grandfather alive for me. At least one, God, please; I could not bear it if all of those relics of his love for me and his passion for poetry would just go up in smoke.
2. my old discombobulated “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in paperback, the one which I have read and re-read many times and know and love. I have at least two more editions of that book – one in a more durable hardcover as an emergency back up for when the paperback one finally does give up the ghost, and a really pretty collector’s edition with illustrations by Alan Lee – but the old paperback is the one I would reach for. Because we have history, that book and I.
3. AT LEAST ONE of my signed treasures – probably the Zelazny one, because he is gone and this really cannot be replaced, but I have others – the Matt Ruff book(s), the GUy Gavriel Kay book(s), the precious Ursula le Guin, the C J Cherryh book(s). It is possible that I would lose it all by dithering too long about which to choose, and would probably use up more than one out of my seven in this particular set. So let’s be fair, let’s call these books 3-6, giving myself a choice of three of those books, just to staunch the bleeding of my heart about the possible impending loss of all the rest.
As for the last one… number 7… please forgive me this, but I would grab one of my last precious hardcovers of my own “Secrets of Jin Shei”. All the rest of my copies of the books I have written might vanish, become ashes, go up in smoke… but I would like to keep at least one, to remind me that I did in fact write those books. It would probably be difficult if next to impossible to replace all the translated ones (how would I even go finding a copy of the Turkish translation? Or the Catalan? Or the Hebrew…?) but I can’t – I couldn’t – take them all. So please, if that’s okay, let me just cling to the one. Only one. And mourn all the rest like lost children.
Which books would YOU take with you, out of a burning house? Yes, you too get seven, if that’s what you want.
Seriously. I want to know.