I enjoyed the Marie Kondo thing. Really. (Is it over yet?). For example, I enjoyed the fabulous new pants and cosy wool sweater I acquired when my friend Emily, a violist in the Utah Symphony, Marie-Kondoed her closet. And I enjoyed all the articles people wrote in response to the Kondo craze, like the one in the Guardian by the writer who decided to ditch all her friends who didn’t spark joy…and then realized the only person left was herself. Oh, well. I especially liked the article/s reacting to Marie’s supposed claim about books, that nobody needs to own more than thirty (wait, people can actually live without hundreds of books?) which included interviews of people who loved their various huge, messy, beautiful libraries. I spent some time after that gazing at my own huge, messy, beautiful library, and tried to imagine whispering to each book as I loaded it into a box to throw away, “Thank you for your service.” And decided I didn’t actually have that much imagination. I didn’t get...