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I hate books. Now, I’m not against literacy. I encourage parents to take their young children to the Norristown-Montgomery County Public Library and let them read to the therapy dogs. I love the words that books contain, and the facts and ideas they convey, but as physical objects, with dimension and weight, I curse their existence.

Recently, I moved from Philadelphia to Norristown, and after lugging more than a dozen boxes of the things up and down a truck ramp and several sets of stairs, along with four large bookcases, I could barely walk. My hips ached. My legs were black and blue. My knuckles cracked and bled. Had it not been for my personal library, the move would have taken half the time, at half the cost, and the recovery time would have been much faster.

In the week following the move, nursing my charley horses with hot showers and aspirin, I vowed I would never buy another book as long as I live.

Books are made of paper. Paper comes from trees. And trees are heavy. They anchor mountains, for heaven sake. They are also used to make houses, and I have never seen anyone successfully lift a house.

Living in one place for any length of time, we inevitably acquire possessions we are probably better off not acquiring. At bottom, all we really need is food, clothing, and shelter. Everything else is a luxury, and when we have to pack it all up and haul it across the county line, it becomes, quite literally, a burden.

I had not moved in over a decade, and, until a year ago, I had the good fortune to work down the street from the best used book outlet in Montgomery County: Books, hardbound or paperback, were two dollars each. If I bought five, I got get one free. The inventory changed every Friday afternoon. The temptation was too great to resist, and as time went on, my library steadily grew, and my shelf space steadily diminished.

As the move approached, I began to panic. I decided the best course of action would be hold an outdoor book sale in front of my old apartment building, to reduce the load. I kept putting it off, however, and by the time I borrowed a table to hold the sale items, winter was setting in, with rain, snow and freezing temperatures. The opportunity had passed.

On some level, I didn’t really want to weed out my collection, and my procrastination proves it. There were many I had not read, and many I intended to read again – someday.

There were reference books and anthologies I would never read all the way through, but which contain valuable information I would need to look up – someday.

There were beautifully bound coffee table volumes I had promised to review on my blog – someday.

There were the dual language books I would use to brush up on my German ? someday.

So, when the big day arrived, I rented a hand truck and, with the help of the kind of friend I wish everyone finds at least once in their lives, wheeled box after box through the pouring rain. I could have been worse, I suppose. At least it wasn’t snowing.

Unpacking and re-alphabetizing the library in my new home took a full week. The bruises faded, the back pain was forgotten, and over the last relatively warm weekend before the winter storms set in, I rolled old my old bicycle out of the closet and rode up the Schuylkill River Trail to Valley National Historical Park. Even on a cloudy day, the view of hills and the soldiers’ huts was inspiring, and I find myself growing curious about life during the Revolution. At the end of the trail loop, I stopped by the visitors’ center and did something I had told myself I would never, ever do again.

I bought a book.Joe Barron is the news editor of The Times Herald. His email address is jbarron@timesherald.com.

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