A book purge can be painful, but weep not for the authors

Literary editor/columnist

Saturday 7 July 2012

Oxfam recently announced its annual list of the authors most frequently donated to its shops, and those most commonly bought.

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Rosemary Goring

Unsurprisingly, the best selling titles are similar to the favourites in ordinary bookshops, albeit a year or two behind the curve: in this case, Stieg Larsson, followed by JK Rowling, Jo Nesbo, Lee Child and Terry Pratchett. I'm more interested in the donations. In this category the front runners are Dan Brown, Ian Rankin, James Patterson, Alexander McCall Smith and John Grisham.

There, in a single shelf, you have the staple, dog-eared fare of almost every B&B in Britain, of every self-catering holiday cottage or, as I know only too well, every small Italian hotel through which the English-speaking world has tramped. With the exception of Dan Brown, I've nothing against any of these authors. Brown is a different matter. I've never given him house room, on the principle that the opening pages of The Da Vinci Code were so bad, it couldn't even be consigned to the compost heap, and therefore would not be useful in any capacity. (I should perhaps clarify that I've happily read, not mulched, the other writers' works.)The reason I scrutinise Oxfam's lists each year is because I live in a perpetual turmoil of deciding which books to keep and which to liberate. I realise that few readers are in such an enviable situation as a book reviewer, who can stockpile hundreds of books a year, quite aside from the ones we buy. But nice though that is, it has its downsides: finding a home with sufficient wall space for floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, extra-strong floorboards, high enough ladders, a good memory for retrieval, a powerful suction nozzle and anaconda-length attachment on the vacuum cleaner, and so on.Choosing which books to ditch can be childishly easy, but more often it's agonising. Looking at those that make their way by the kilo into Oxfam's shops, however, it would appear that if there's one category nobody mourns, it's the one-season wonders that top the charts for a few months, then fade as soon as their secrets have been spilled. In the non-stop business of household recycling, novels that depend on a clever plot rather than literary profundity are generally the first casualties.I've occasionally walked around second-hand bookshops with writers, hearing pitiful gasps when they see one of their rejected offspring. If the spine has not been cracked, the insult is doubled. The reader didn't even open it! But surely this rather brutal trade in unwanted books puts novelists in a serious bind. For all that making money is usually their first topic of conversation, and a place in the bestseller lists their holy grail, at heart most writers crave longevity – immortality indeed – more than cash. They write because they are trying to say something, and for that to be dismissed as soon as the book has been closed is failure of a sort. After all, people hold on to books that have made an impact.So how does it feel to be top of the recycled heap? I suppose the main consolation is that to dominate charity bookshop shelves is the inevitable mirror-image of being a bestseller. Only those who've sold millions manage this. And yet how can you not be hurt when a reader makes it plain they don't need your book any more? There's only one thing worse than finding a book of yours that's been passed on, and that's seeing one that you've personally signed.Call me callous, but my heart doesn't bleed too heavily for these authors. For every mass-market paperback that's making a few bucks for charity, there are countless quieter, less financially successful books by lesser-known or unheard-of writers which sit snug and prized on their readers' shelves. Such treasures will only be consigned to charity when the last will and testament has been read, and the whole house cleared. Unless, that is, they've been loaned to a good friend and never returned - but that's a whole other column.

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A book purge can be painful, but weep not for the authors

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