With many books comes much responsibility.
Alberto Manguel is a Argentine-Canadian writer, translator and world-renowned bibliophile
In June 2015, he left his home, a medieval presbytery in the Loire valley and moved to a one-bed apartment on New York’s Upper West Side.
Which left him with a problem.
What to do with the 35,000 books in his personal library, which to keep, which to store and which to get rid of.
His memoir, ‘Packing my Library’ tells of the way he resolved this, and led him to consider the relationship between books and their readers, why we collect books and the role they play in civilised life.
At my age, I don’t have that many ambitions left unfulfilled.
But I would love to see all my books reunited in one place.
Perhaps it’s just as well there aren’t any medieval presbyteries in Kyrgyzstan.
