Some books are impossible to get rid of, this touched upon in the best novel I’ve read lately, Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner. This is a novel absolutely woven with bookish encounters, though the particular circumstance I’ll note now concerns a magazine. That the secondhand bookshop employing our unnamed narrator retails back issues of National Geographic for twenty-five cents each, but hasn’t even managed to sell one in five years.

Which I suspect isn’t even a matter of economics, and that if the price was lowered to nothing, the issues would remain unmoved. A sight such as the above photograph (an empty “Free Books” box) being rare. For the inherent undesirableness of some reading material seems to be a law of the universe, usually running parallel with a most unfortunate ubiquity.

All this being relevant now that that is spring (and it is spring you know, even if it’s hard to tell). What an ideal season then to get your hands dusty, to set about pruning one’s shelves, culling the collection– for a library is garden and a place where weeds can grow. And so what to do with the discards?

Some suggestions:

1. Set a “Free Books” box out on your curb, and then, for fun, stay near the window to watch the vultures descend. Most people will try to look nonchalant as they riffle through, such affectations belied by them emerging with a teetering stack higher than their head. People may even start fighting over first editions.
2. Get involved with an online book exchange such as Bookmooch.
3. Donate to your local college/university/library book sale, or another charity.
4. Or toss them into the recycling box. Quite frankly, no one is interested in your copy of The Prophet or Listen to the Warm. Bin the National Geographic back issues. And your outdated astronomy textbooks, Cold War atlases and 1980s guides to microwave cuisine will prove impossible to unload, save to those who might appreciate their kitsch value.

My last point sounding harsh, but I know of which I speak, because I am a free book box vulture myself. I see what gets left over. I attend myriad book sales, spend time lurking in secondhand stacks. I know that a wish for any used Joyce Carol Oates could be easily granted, and I suspect Silas Marner mustn’t be as good as Middlemarch based on how many copies of each I find kicking around. Experience tells me that your box of Robert Ludlums would be scooped up in minutes, but then they’d only be out on somebody’s else’s curb a few days later.

Bearing this in mind, somebody will find treasure in your discards. If fact even if you bear nothing in mind, treasure’s glimmer will remain, and particularly if Silas Marner is what somebody’s after. The eye of the beholder, naturally, and surely someone out there thinks microwave cookery books are wonderful. No doubt in every used bookstore, in every book sale jumble, in every free books box, there lies one heart’s desire– that which they would rummage through National Geographic back issues for. This being the very promise, of course, that keeps the vultures coming back.