Very recently, I had to play that desert island game—you know the one where you’re stranded on a desert island and have to choose what to bring? It’s all pretend, of course. Just a quick little skip through Imagination Town, a vacation in make believe. Except I was forced to make my desert island choices for real. I’ll explain.

No, I wasn’t stranded on a desert island. Quite the opposite actually: I moved to Manhattan. Granted, moving into a tiny apartment in Manhattan isn’t on the same level, hardship-wise, but coming from a spacious place in the suburbs certainly made things difficult, especially when it came to choosing what books to bring.

Smaller room = less shelf space = the fewer books I can bring. It’s that simple; yet, you find yourself considering some difficult choices. Do you bring that book you’ve read dozens of times with the hundreds of dog-eared pages and even greater number of coffee stains? Or do you bring leave those behind, as painful as that is, to make room for those new books you recently acquired (say at BEA, maybe) and haven’t had the chance to read yet?

In the end, I cheated. One conference call with my soon-to-be roommates, and we worked out a way to put together a respectable library. John brings the Hemingway, while Ryan is in charge of all non-fiction. We managed to make room for everything, from the favorites like Infinite Jest right down to your political thrillers, such as a couple of Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp books. Oh yeah, and we have Kindles too…

What would you bring?