Caught as we are at home in between selling and moving house soon, part of a downsizing exercise meant to coincide with the inevitable passage of time, my one and only real dilemma is not what to do with all my books but more a question of how to squeeze them into the new available space.

So while my better half concentrates on other mathematical teasers that would create and hopefully find space in our future new abode for favourite pieces of furniture, I am being tempted by some wild ideas from people who have already been through this sort of nightmare.

“You first choose the books you will never have the heart to let go,” one kind sage told me, “then start packing those you attach no value to into handy-sized cardboard boxes. Once you have done so, the parting will be much less difficult.”

But what do I do with the filled up boxes, I asked?

“Easy. Go to one of the more popular car-boot sale markets on the island and do your stuff.” The stuff of course means selling and bargaining with other people interested in buying and actually reading books.

But I can’t imagine myself selling books I have enjoyed and cherished for a good number of years. What price tags would one fix?

“Good morning, Madame. Interested in this Bob Geldof biography? Great book. I read it. The man is as a good a writer as he is in organising rock concerts for Africa. Fifty cents.” She looks aghast.

“OK, then… make it 25.” She now smiles, thinking this man is a hopeless dealer; and she is right.

I shudder even at the thought of putting a price on the works of Jan Morris, Robert Morley, Carl Sagan, Milton Shulman, Isaac Asimov and so many other great masters I still have with me here, but then it may prove to be a healthy way of passing them on to others whose love of books and reading is no less passionate.

“This book, Miss, I have read a hundred times,” I tell the bemused 20-year-old, studious type who may have the misfortune of stumbling on to my temporary piece of commercial territory, “it is a joy to behold and an absolute pleasure every time you read it.” Then, rather sheepishly, I add: “Fifty cents for this great Nigel Williams novel set in the Swinging Sixties.” She too looks horrified.

“OK, then…make it 10.” She too smiles, concluding – again only too rightly – this man is a hopeless dealer… but why are there tears in his eyes?

One of the books that will certainly not make it to the car-boot sale is Books Do Furnish A Room by Anthony Powell (a novel, really). For decades I have purposely kept it within easy reach to convince the cynics in the family that filling up every nook and cranny of the old home with books and more books made sense even aesthetically. It is a principle I intend to put forward at this delicate moment in time, though obviously with much less conviction given the square-metre crisis that we have on our hands.

One less painful suggestion has been that of distributing the surplus among the offspring whose bookshelves would still be happily available anyway. But papa’s reading tastes may not exactly match those of his daughters’, hence the difficulty in voluntarily unloading such “superfluous” things as an alpine range of traditional and modern poetry, and old editions of Ian Fleming, Patricia Wentworth, Agatha Christie and John Creasey works.

Another suggestion is to donate some of the books to a local council library somewhere. That way, I am told, people would get to enjoy what you have had the pleasure to offer – company and, sometimes when the going got tough, even to talk to, for such a long period of time. That’s a very innocent way of putting it. I have read books only to banish them to the most unreachable, dustiest corners of my bookshelves. I have even hated some of them but never had the guts to inflict a bit of anger on them, let alone doing away with them. I may not be too religious, but among bookworms it really is considered sacrilegious damaging or, even worse, destroying a book.

But would a large number of yellowing paperbacks be of any interest to anyone? I should think so. There is always the sandpaper trick one is inclined to resort to by way of brushing the yellow off the three edges of every book.

And the treasures… my treasures? Those will have to grow legs and join me in my new home where they will continue to furnish each and every room. My Spike Milligan collection that was and will always be an inspiration; my vast library of Maltese literature books, which include works that go back to the sixties’ thematic and stylistic revolution – from Oliver Friggieri and Frans Sammut to Raymond Mahoney and Victor Fenech, about which I have written so many reviews; my many biographies and autobiographies; my old school textbooks such as Robert Browning’s famous Thirty Poems and, funnily enough, a 1956 edition of A First English Companion – remember it?

It is not a good conundrum to have to deal with, this business of moving. My prevailing dream of late has me running to the music of Mission Impossible from one room to the other inside the old home we shall be leaving soon, as row upon row of books scream vulgarities in unison at me.

“You son of a bitch,” cries Brian Lecomber from his Turn Killer, while Haruki Murakami throws stale sushi delicacies at me from his Norwegian Wood. There is a chorus of venom-filled insults from the rest of the authors who thought they had found in me the ideal haven where they could converge and eagerly fraternise with the dust mites and the left-over bookmarks.

The dream highlights several companions in distress. Sole Bellow with Rosie Thomas. Aldous Huxley with Jill Tweedie. G.K. Chesterton with Donald E. Westlake and so many other curious tandems. They all twist and shout for my attention while I morosely put away some of their neighbours into Dettol-smelling cardboard boxes that once brought medicines and contraceptives to these shores. Hygienic packing.

When the whole furore in the dream finally hits me, I wake up sweating. It really hasn’t begun yet. But I will proceed carefully in my usual mode of conviction, which insists that books do furnish a room. From bedroom to bathroom if need be if you haven’t got the space.