We get the lesson early in life as library metaphor: Good people don’t judge books — meaning people — by their covers.

But I’ve always kept my own secret, inverted corollary: You can judge people by their books.

That means I’ve always assumed people will judge me by my books. The books I’m proud to own are lovingly shelved or artfully stacked around my house. The timeless ones on history, culture and religion. The latest political books. Novels that have won Pulitzers. Travel books about places I’ve been to. My treasured collection of food-stained cookbooks.

The books that, truth be told, imply that I’m far more interesting than I am.

But I also have a whole room full of books in boxes, stacked in the basement. These are the books that I don’t care to be judged by. They are hidden away, like that crazy aunt who supposedly lived in the attic. Yet many of these books define me in ways that the 11 thick volumes of Will & Ariel Durant’s “The History of Civilization” cannot.

I’ve been going through the books in my basement for days now. What to keep and what to toss?

The Trixie Beldens and the Nancy Drews? Keep! Trixie’s spelunking sparked my lifelong fascination with caves. Nancy is why I bought a convertible billed as a Roadster. Nancy’s car.

The 30-some paperback novels of military fiction by W.E.B Griffin? My late husband devoured these like some women gorge on the book candy that is romance fiction. Toss…with reluctance and a smile of remembrance for how much he enjoyed them. But the military history hardcovers that he, a Marine, treasured? Keep.

“Elizabeth Takes Off.” Did I really spend $17.95 in 1987 on a book by Ms. Taylor with the subtitle, “On Weight Gain, Weight Loss, Self-Image and Self-Esteem,” or did someone give it to me? Keep. Re-gift as a gag gift.

How-to books like “Easy Plants for Difficult Places?” Toss. Irrelevant in the Age of Google.

The ratty old paperback classics by Balzac, Hemingway, and Shakespeare? Toss. I hope I’ll find time someday to reread them. When I do, I’ll buy them again. On an e-reader.

But the paperback copy of “War & Peace?” Keep! I read that book on many a train and carried it for months in a backpack on the post-college tour of Europe on $20 a day.

Political books du jour like George Will’s “The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986?” Must have been a reason that one ended up in the basement boxes and not in my study. Toss. Sorry, George.

“How to Become a Good Dancer by Arthur Murray?” A book once owned by my 92-year-old Aunt Mavis, who now can’t tell what year it is. Published in 1938 and signed by Arthur Murray, himself. Keep! And move upstairs to my living room to be treasured.

Beautiful hardcover editions of genres I’ve never read like “The Complete Science Fiction Treasury of H.G. Wells?” Keep. Maybe I’ll develop a taste for it when I’m the crazy old aunt in the attic.

The travel books with fantastic photos of the Seychelles? Keep. That travel dream kept hope alive while studying for the bar exam one hot summer decades ago. I still hope I’ll get there, someday.

What about the local Minnesota authors who went national like Garrison Keillor and John Sandford? Toss. Sorry, Garrison. I’ll visit Lake Wobegone on the radio. Sorry, John. I’ll buy every Lucas Davenport adventure you write (and I’m still looking for a real life Lucas).

When I finally finish going through the boxes, I count 27 grocery bags of books to Toss. But I can’t actually “Toss” perfectly good books. Off to Goodwill they go.

Sigh. I kept about the same amount of books. Neatly stacked them in a backroom of my basement. Someday, they will be someone else’s Keep or Toss dilemma.

As I sit here in my basement, I can’t help but think of myself as a bibliosaur. The generations after me will read books on electronic devices. But how will they judge others by the books they keep when their bookshelves are empty? Will they even have bookshelves? Impossible to tell whether someone keeps Umberto Eco or the Unabomber Manifesto on an e-reader.

And e-readers can’t be used as weapons. I hit a bothersome drunk on a Greek ferry with that copy of War & Peace. Holding the very same book in my hands gives me a real — not virtual — laugh out loud.

E-readers don’t have that dusty, musty smell of old books. Learning dance steps from YouTube is not the same as what Aunt Mavis and my late Uncle Fuzz (he had curly hair before he went bald) did in the 1940s. They put a record on a turntable and followed Arthur’s footprint diagrams.

Holding the very same books brings back the memories and makes them vivid.

You can’t get that from e-readers.