Why keep books? I'm not talking picture books on Raphael's Madonnas, or even ones on Madonna, which might be fun to keep by the bedside for a visual spree. I mean that spine-wracked copy of Birdsong, those pine-green Virago paperbacks, your everyday Hollinghurst or Vernon God Little. Once you've read them, what is the point of keeping them? Do you ever wake up and think, my word, I must get going with that Willa Cather book again? I suspect not. It was a good read once, but twice would be, dare I say it, a waste of time, particularly when you could be reading something new.
An editor on the Independent first gave me the idea of not keeping books. He never kept a book once he had read it. It struck me as rather revolutionary, but then I forgot all about it and let the tomes continue to pile up. Now, however, I am moving house, and am in ruthless mode. Pulling out 200 books from the shelves where, I am sorry to say, they have rested, coated in dust, for five to ten years has brought the relative merits of Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife, a Penguin paperback of Nicholas Nickleby and Las Vegas Without a Map into rude perspective. And yes, they have all been ditched at the local Sue Ryder charity shop. I've enjoyed them. Now it's someone else's turn.
Obviously, precious gifts must remain, as do lovely hardback Everyman editions. But frankly, dusty old paperbacks, some of which date back to university or even schooldays, simply do not have the pulling power to get into my packing cases. Particularly the academic stuff. I know that lots of people like to keep their university books, possibly in order to show off. But I find there is nothing more cringe-making than to have reminders of grim essays written more than 15 years ago lying around your bedroom. Or, worse, the public area of the downstairs loo. I mean, who is going to be impressed that you were once conversant with Jane Austen: feminism and fiction?
My guillotine has stayed for anything that had an impact greater than the momentary pleasure of reading something well written. Katherine Mansfield's short, devastating story Bliss, Philip Roth's American Pastoral, Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World? Your futures are assured.
Woman's Hour on Radio 4 has been running "Women's Watershed Fiction", which asks listeners to vote for the books that "have changed the way we see women". The longlist runs from Angelique by the husband-and-wife team Sergeanne Golon to The Women's Room by Marilyn French, via Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Each book has been nominated by ordinary readers, and intriguingly the "house move" test is used by others. "Even now, 25 years and many house moves later, I can put my hand on this book in an instant," one online contributor enthused about Lynne Reid Banks's The L-Shaped Room. Having shooed Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong off to the charity shop, I was slightly ashamed to see it on the list. Not without comment, however. Tucked in between the glowing testimonies is one from a Brian Richie, who writes: "There's no denying it's a great book . . . but it does amazingly little, if anything, to change the way we see women . . . why the hell did anyone vote for it?"
Women's Watershed Fiction will announce the top ten on 8 December
