Books that never get put out in the garage sale

Which books go on the "keeper" list ? That is, which ones never get put out in the garage sale or taken to be recycled at the second-hand book shop ? In pondering this question in the fuzzy hour (the one between waking and sleeping on a Sunday morning) I find there is no universal quality that one can point the finger at. However, looking at the bookshelves I do recognise some common elements:

1. Breadth AND depth. In other words, the subject matter ranges far and wide geographically and historically and yet manages to provide detail which rings true and makes one want to know more. Obviously a lot of research must go into such books, O'Brian's masterpiece series being a case in point.
2. The characters are complex, often slightly flawed and have human qualities that are cross-cultural and eternal - i.e. recognisable in those around us today and (dare I say it) even in ourselves
3. Beauty of language: clarity and economy of expression and of course the skill of being able to build a word picture. This takes many forms and, for me, is most attractive when most quirky. Douglas Adams in his "Hitchhiker's Guide" series is a master of this (I say "is" rather than "was" because the best books make their authors immortal). Numerous examples possible but let's settle for the Vogon spaceships (big, yellow, oblong, malevolent) hanging above the English countryside "in exactly the way bricks don't". Antonine de Saint Exupery is also brilliant at this and his best work somehow survives translation from the French. He describes a gentle French brook winding its way across a grassy meadow as "a snake in the grass lying in wait to transform his force-landing aircraft into a flaming candelabra". With such expressions he shows how perceptions of a scene or object are coloured by circumstance.
4. A resistance to classification: In our local library books are now arranged on the shelves according to "genre" rather than alphabetically by author in the Dewey system. This means someone has to decide what the genre is. The best books frustrate such classification. Again the Aubrey-Maturin series of Patrick O'Brian is a good example. Our librarians can't seem to decide if they are "historical", "war" or "classic literature". They could equally be placed in natural history, biography or maritime technology or something like that.

Time for coffee and then a visit to the plant nursery to reinforce the ranks of plants in the "Plants vs. Weeds" battle waging around our house. I will also help the Plants with a bit of chemical warfare against their opponents. "I love the smell of Roundup in the morning"

Cheerio (belongs with Toodooloo).