How to choose which books to clear off the bookshelf.

Enkidu

I keep thinking I'll turn up on an episode of Hoarders because of all the books I have. A couple times a year I try to weed through them - some go to friends, some to our church for them to sell. I'm pretty brutal about paperbacks though.

I saw a great article once on a man who built something that looked like a skinny silo - all the walls were lined with books and there was a super tall ladder that went up and around. So that's a great dream, to build a tall skinny library silo in our back yard. Ha ha. I'll try to find a picture...

USARAY

I donate all mine read and share, community college, library, prison share
http://www.adoptalibrary.org/#US people don't have the simple luxury of books

chiquimonkey

StillHere wrote:

chiquimonkey wrote:

I gutted my bookcases a while ago, while difficult, it felt liberating. I did keep books with inscriptions/autographs, and the large art ones and reference/biographies. It took a lot for me as I'm horribly sentimental, but after a while it just takes up room. Like Ed said, "It's not the world that's heavy it's the things that you save".

You can always donate to a local library if they want any (granted they aren't titles that you would break your heart to give away!)

There's also this program to help soldiers, it's for the US but perhaps there's an equivalent overseas: http://booksforsoldiers.com/

There's also convalescent homes too, they might appreciate a donation

i LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea chiqui! I'm off to find out about it right now

Sweet!

I like Tritone's link too. It is so true, we are very fortunate to have access to books. There's a group called Books for Asia that we use at work, we donate scientific journals and textbooks to them, they send them off to poor areas in the East.

I'm lucky in my hometown recycle station, they have a book bin, you can drop stuff off and pick up whatever you like, free exchange!

DS1119

Paging brianlux. Paging brianlux.

DS1119

DS1119 wrote:

Paging brianlux. Paging brianlux.

Oops. Posted before I read the thread. :fp: Never mind and carry on. :corn:

chiquimonkey

DS1119 wrote:

Oops. Posted before I read the thread. :fp:

That's the best smiley

StillHere

Tritone wrote:

I donate all mine read and share, community college, library, prison share
http://www.adoptalibrary.org/#US people don't have the simple luxury of books

ah this is a great one too!

brianlux

DS1119 wrote:

DS1119 wrote:

Paging brianlux. Paging brianlux.

Oops. Posted before I read the thread. :fp: Never mind and carry on. :corn:

"You rang?" (in my best imitation Lurch voice)

chime

May be you should try bookcrossing

http://www.bookcrossing.com/

Then you get to pass your book on, find out what the next person thinks of it, follow it's travels

Claireack

Thanks for the ideas everyone. Ok the Shakespeare can stay.

I'm afraid I've failed on the first hurdle. I've managed to delay the sorting out and in the meantime have bought 3 books on Amazon :?

Maybe the first book to go can be The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus.

Someone mentioned thrillers - I've got loads of Jeffrey Deaver, I guess they're easily replaceable. Ok they can go next.

Claireack

81 wrote:

Nooooooooooo..........!

chadwick

leave all national geographics. they show boobs.

redrock

Claireack wrote:

Maybe the first book to go can be The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus

What?? And not be able to regularly refer to the book in anticipation of the prophecies or check back to see if he was correct?

oona left

I have this problem too. I've been able to purge a few times (usually only when I'm about to move), but I was just considering doing this yesterday!!

When I look over the titles for the ones I would be willing to part with, I rarely end up with more than 3 or 4.

In the fall, I cleared off two shelves and packed the books into a box. They've been in the crawl space ever since. The fact that I really can't recall what was packed up ought to be enough of a clue that I would be okay if I parted with those ones for good.

I like the idea of donating them. Up until now, I've usually just donated or sold them (for pennies, really) to used bookstores. But to donate them to an organization with a specific cause might help me change the criteria by which I currently analyze which books go and which books stay (i.e., by changing the question from "can I part with this?" to "would someone else like to read this?").

drivingrl

chiquimonkey wrote:

I gutted my bookcases a while ago, while difficult, it felt liberating. I did keep books with inscriptions/autographs, and the large art ones and reference/biographies. It took a lot for me as I'm horribly sentimental, but after a while it just takes up room. Like Ed said, "It's not the world that's heavy it's the things that you save".

You can always donate to a local library if they want any (granted they aren't titles that you would break your heart to give away!)

There's also this program to help soldiers, it's for the US but perhaps there's an equivalent overseas: http://booksforsoldiers.com/

There's also convalescent homes too, they might appreciate a donation

I cut my book collection in half last year. I did it by using the 3 second method. (Yes, the method from the T.V. show Hoarders :oops: )

There are books I know I can't get rid of, like my Astrology books or the books like belonged to my parents. For the rest of the books, I used the 3 Second Rule. You have 3 seconds to decide if it "stays" or "goes", and it made the process very easy for me. No kidding, I cut my book collection in half. In retrospect, those books that were placed in the "goes" pile... I don't really remember which books they were and I don't miss them.

With some of the books that were "stays", I did what some of the other posters have suggested - I loaned books to friends and gave some to the local library. And those books I chose to keep because I hadn't read them yet, I am going to give them to friends so they can read them and pass them along.

Claireack

redrock wrote:

Claireack wrote:

Maybe the first book to go can be The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus

What?? And not be able to regularly refer to the book in anticipation of the prophecies or check back to see if he was correct?

It honestly wasn't as exciting a read as I imagined

Chadwick - No national geographics here. But I think we have a book of semi-nudes of the young Madonna (before she was famous stuff). I'm not too fussed about keeping it. Besides if I want to see boobs I'll look in the mirror (I'll have some sticky tape handy to recapture my youth).

StillHere

i'm moving on june 29
and every time i've moved in the past
i've lost a good portion of my "unecessaries"
so if the trend follows, i won't have to worry about thinning out my collection :roll: