My husband and I are moving to Arizona in a few months so we're starting to think about how much stuff we have knowing that we're going to drag it across the country. One of the things we started with is our collection of books. A few weeks ago we went into our home office and started sorting through all our books, deciding which ones to keep and which to donate. We have so many that we hadn't even unpacked them all from when we moved here almost 2 years ago. So we had to open up the boxes to even remember what we had.
Besides the fact that our office has been a mess ever since, it's been kind of hard because I like a lot of our books. So far we have several piles of books that we've both read and don't really need to keep. We're probably going to donate most of them to the library or goodwill, but we may try and sell a few online.
Here's my question: Do you even have occasion to clean out your personal library? How do you decide which ones to keep? What do you do with the ones you decide to give up?
3 comments:
I recently did a purge of my bookshelves at my wife's request. I love books and I love having books on my shelves. But, I have three full size shelves that were full to overflowing. My paperback shelf, (yes I have one for PB's and one for HB's) was so packed I had one shelf stacked two books deep and another with books stacked on top of the books that were already in place.
I went through and picked the books that I really didn't care for first. Then I picked the ones that were ok, but I knew I would probably never read again. And then I threw in a few of the duplicate copies I had.
So far they are all either boxed up or sitting in a stack on the floor waiting to be run over to Goodwill. You get about almost 50% of the original price of paperbacks when you donate them for a write-off. You get less for hardbacks which doesn't make sense to me, but there it is.
I checked ebay first to see what I might be able to sell them for, but people offer the books I have for $0.99 there and I figured the write-off was worth more in the long run.
Good Luck. :o)
Oh, culling the books is the worst. Fortunately, my local library has used book sales, and that's where they go, unless friends want them. Some came from there in the first place. How to choose?! I keep anything I might need for reference or might read again, including nearly all poetry books. I give up novels I didn't like or won't reread in the foreseeable future, unless I really loved them, but sometimes I miss the ones I do give up anyway. Never a perfect system.
umm... cleaning up the library is simple task as per my own ways of thinking. To tell you, I read Sci-Fi and Non-Fiction only and nothing else. I will do these:
1.) Any book that changed the way I look at the world and my life will be here forever.
2.) Any funny pics, comedy movies, articles or books will simply be removed or burnt. (thats why I don't purchase any)
3.) The story was good but it did not teach me anything or did not give me some skill to work with will be discarded, except under point 4.
4.) Again, the story was good and it did teach me some skills but the author writing style was too poor to be called a good author. Now here I have my own definition of "good author". The book will be removed.
5.) The story has no connection with reality ,so simply burn this book.
Post a Comment