Keep your tidy, spark-joy hands off my book piles, Marie Kondo; The Washington Post, January 10, 2019

Ron Charles, The Washington Post; Keep your tidy, spark-joy hands off my book piles, Marie Kondo

"“Books are the reflection of your thoughts and values,” Kondo says, and she’s right, but then she’s so wrong when she goes on to tell her television audience: “By tidying books, it will show you what kind of information is important to you at this moment.”

That’s the problem with Kondo’s method. It presumes a kind of self-consciousness that no real lover of literature actually feels. We don’t keep books because we know “what kind of information is important to us at this moment.” We keep them because we don’t know.

So take your tidy, magic hands off my piles, if you please. That great jumble of fond memories, intellectual challenges and future delights doesn’t just spark, it warms the whole house."