Please don't judge me, but in March 2020, when I moved across the country, I got rid of six boxes of books, including many classic works of literature and nonfiction. Gone were titles by Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey'I'd rather reread Pride and Prejudice) and Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities'plain old disinterest). Moby-Dick went (I'd tried for years, and failed). So did Joan Didion's Political Fictions and Robert Caro's The Power Broker (just never got around to them). What I did not'and never would'get rid of: The Snowy Day, Miss Rumphius, The Little House, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, Blueberries for Sal, and about 50 other children's books. My copies have been with me since the 1970s and '80s. They sit, always, in a place of honor, alongside artist monographs and exhibition catalogs. In 1991, when I left home for college, they moved with me from Davis, California, to New York City. From the East Village they traveled to Brooklyn, then Queens, then Brooklyn again,...
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