The corporate demon has climbed between the pages of my beloved books

I have been culling my books. Moving into a different room, I decided to cut my collection down to size. But it hasn’t been an easy process – I feel as if a small part of me has been lost forever.
Let me not get carried away. More importantly, we might wonder: ‘which part has been lost?’

Have you seen the latest fire hazard adverts? They feature the tagline: “You don’t have to die to lose your life,” accompanied by pictures of burnt sofas. Long gone are the days when vagabonds would stand in the street shouting “I’ve got my health and that’s all that matters!” Nope – nowadays you are your possessions. Throw my CD player away, and my soul is diminished. What happens if I get rid of all my possessions? Do I die? No. I die if I stop eating or drinking (but that is another matter: we all know what happens if you eat too much).

What has been lost in my book cull is a part of my consumer-self. Schopenhauer was right when he said that “the appropriation of a book is often mistaken for an appropriation of its contents.”