I gave away the book, A Bell for Adano. It’s a full book, with laughter and tears and all the emotions in between. I love it and I have read it all the way through twice, with occasional spot reading whenever I encounter it on my shelves. I gave it away because I love it; I want someone else to experience it.

I own thousands of books. I’ve never counted them, but there’s more than 8 seven-foot-tall bookshelves full of books when they’re all out of boxes; that was when we lived in Emblem, Wyoming, and had a room devoted to just books. And a table; we had a table in there, for storing unfinished projects and paintings that needed to dry.

Since then we’ve moved twice and accumulated many more books, but we’ve never had them all out on shelves again. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with my children’s rooms when they leave home. Or maybe not. There’s a little free library near my home, a small wooden box on a post, with a see-through door and a roof like a little house. It’s full of books other people have donated. It’s free for anyone to read the books, carry them away and bring other books back.

I set a goal several years ago that I would walk every day. I live within walking distance of a grocery store, clothing store, Dollar General, bicycle shop, live music restaurant, coffee shop, and auto parts store. There’s a dentist, several doctors in one large clinic, and a medical lab. Two or three churches lie just beyond my neighborhood, along with a garage that fixes cars and a restaurant that fixes pizza. That’s not counting the bar and the cross-stitch supply store. If I went a little further, there’s a breakfast cafe, a donut shop, a second auto-repair garage, parks, and baseball fields. There’s a foot bridge across the river and two separate playgrounds, one on each side of the river. Do I walk to those? Usually not.

But two blocks to the little free library? That I like to do. So I set myself a goal: bring a book to donate every time I walk past. I remember about half the time. I don’t have a system for deciding which books to donate, so I have to pick out one before I go. I often pick up one I haven’t read, or haven’t finished, or haven’t looked at in several years, and start reading it on the way to the box. Sometimes I put it in; sometimes it comes back home with me. Twice the book has ended up in my recycling when I get home, once because it was falling apart.

The second trashed book was on treating depression, written in 1974. I must have got it at a yardsale years ago. I read part of it, and some of it was helpful, but most of it is horribly outdated. Some of it is actively harmful. I gather that depression in the 1970s was something newly discovered, newly described and newly treatable, with medications I wouldn’t inflict on a rat now. It was written in a readable enough style for that time period, but too wordy now. There are better sources of help free online.