Blogger’s Note: I apologise for the offence and, in one case, shock, I caused last week by casually mentioning that Bernice and I have decided to start looking to move to Zichron Ya’akov. The fact is that we have been kicking this idea around for a year or so, and when, a couple of weeks ago, I finally came round to agreeing with Bernice that it made perfect sense, it was something that we had been living with for so long that I completely forgot we hadn’t actually shared it with many people. Anyway, I hope everyone has now recovered from the shock, and, rest assured: it’s not going to happen any time soon, and, when it does, Zichron should still be only just under two hours’ drive from Maale Adumim and two hours on the train from Jerusalem.

Apologies in advance if the writing gets a bit disjointed this week. The fact is that I’m in the middle of a process of going cold turkey, and I’m starting to get the shakes. Let me explain. Our expectation is that our move to Zichron, when it happens, will involve downsizing. Having eventually made up our minds that we were committed to this project, I, for one, am very keen to demonstrate that commitment in tangible ways.

Our first couple of weeks of scrolling through the property pages online has made it clear that we are never going top find a kitchen with the cupboard and worktop space of our current kitchen. However, it is also clear that many properties come with a store-room attached. I therefore took a good look at everything we have in our kitchen drawers and cupboards, and came to the conclusion that we could keep about 45% of it (some 1.33 cubic metres) in a storeroom, and simply take it out when we need it. This includes such items as all of our Pesach dishes, the ice-cream maker, slow cooker and similar large occasional items, spare glasses that we use on very rare occasions. Once I was able to show Bernice the Excel spreadsheet with all of the calculations, her mind was put at ease, having been blown by the photos of the postage-stamp kitchens that some people seem to cope in,

Once I had tackled the kitchen, entirely on paper, I turned my attention to a genuine physical area of downsize. Twice a year, Maale Adumim holds a charity book sale. We have donated to it three times. The first time, many years ago, I sorted out 100 books, and, between sorting them out and taking them to the book sale, 93 of them had found their way back onto the bookshelf.

My problem is that I have always prided myself that, if anyone is staying with us and asks whether we have anything by Margaret Attwood, or any novels set in a dystopian world whose inhabitants speak a language invented by the author, or something in the South American magic realism line, or a Ruth Rendell crime novel, I can always put my hand on such a book. This pride has not been one whit diminished by the sad fact that, in the last 42 years, not a single person has stayed with us and asked to borrow a book.

Last year, growing tired of endlessly rearranging books on our shelves to accommodate new acquisitions, I took myself in hand and actually managed to give two or three boxes of books to the book sale. I achieved this by agreeing to have non-favourite authors represented by only one book.

This year, I have gone almost the whole hog. I have admitted to myself that nobody is ever going to ask for a book. I have further convinced myself that I will be happy to spend my remaining years trying to catch up with those books that I have been promising myself to read (in one case for 55 years) and reading newly published books. I will not be rereading even books that I loved reading.

So, I sat down last week and went through all of our bookshelves. Bernice retrieved the books we are still holding for Esther and Micha’el, and insisted they choose definitively whether they want us to give them to them or give them away. Meanwhile, I started with the low-hanging fruit. When we lived, just the two of us, in a rambling eight-room house in South Wales, before coming on aliya, we amassed a collection of cartoon books, which we kept mostly in the toilet. They, of course, came on Aliyah with us, and, in his youth, Micha’el enjoyed them very much. Since he left home, nobody has so much as opened a single one of them, and, dear as I claim they are to me, I have to take that as an indication that they do not warrant the shelf-space. That was two boxes there!

Next, the non-fiction. We have accumulated a number of coffee-table art-books, which have never resided on a coffee table in our home. Again, I cannot remember the last time I looked at any of them. Several of them are no longer in very good condition. In addition, if I want to look at Rembrandt’s masterpieces, I can study them in truer and richer colour, in close-up, online on a big screen, lifesize.

By this point, I was starting to break into my stride. Bernice then took charge of the Shoah literature – one of her specialist subjects – and proved scarcely less ruthless than myself. The rest of the non-fiction yielded plenty of candidates. ‘How to’ books for a variety of hobbies taken up at some point and put down at some other; coffee-table books celebrating a Britain that is no longer; a collection of maps and atlases that would be of interest only to a historian.

Eventually, I tackled the fiction. After an intense hour, I had reduced our collection to Dickens (see below) and another 22 titles. There are another 70 titles that either one of us or both of us have not read yet. For the moment, we are keeping those, but, once read, they will almost certainly be passed on.

So: what, and why, made the cut. I spent very little time weighing anything up. All of the decisions were instinctive, and I didn’t revisit anything.

Lord of the Flies; The Tin Drum; Catch-22; The Yawning Heights; Ridley Walker; Hamnet; A Beggar in Jerusalem; The Little Prince; The Catcher in the Rye; Lolita; the Chosen; The Magic Mountain; Tristam Shandy; Waterland; The Collected Jonathan Swift; Frankenstein; Middlemarch; Couples; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The Poisonwood Bible; The Grapes of Wrath; A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Add to that the mock-leather complete set of Dickens, with my monogram on each of the 16 volumes, that I received as a Barmitzvah present.

What, I wonder, do I, do you, conclude from this list? Reviewing it now, for the first time since I made the selection, I am surprised that I did not retain one Jane Austen novel – almost certainly Emma. I may still dig that out from the box. It is also very surprising that I have not retained one John le Carre. That was a conscious decision, because I felt that none of his finest work stands alone. The novels centred on George Smiley – chief among them, perhaps, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – do not, I feel, stand as tall when they stand alone.

Other questions arise. Where is our copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude? Are we really not keeping An Artist of the Floating World No Anthony Burgess? No John Banville, the only author I have ever written a fan letter to! No Julian Barnes. No Graham Greene, whose works I devoured in my teenage years. What was I thinking of? Is it too late?

Yes, the die is cast. The books are sitting, boxed, in the middle of the room, and tomorrow morning we will take them down to the book sale. Any regrets we have after that will require turning up as the doors open and buying the books back, and how sad would that be?!

I had thought our library would be there for our grandchildren to enjoy, but, even if they mature into readers of literature in English, rather than Hebrew or Portuguese, most of what I would have offered them will doubtless, by then, be available free on Gothenburg. Not to mention that most of what I would have offered them was in paperback and many of the books, as they opened them, would have cracked their spines and shed their pages. Feel free to comment on what is missing from this list, and what is present on it. You might want to think about your own 20 indispensable novels, in case you ever plan to downsize,