I’ve decided to stop saving every book I read. My bookshelf is overflowing and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Well, ok, it does make sense, I love the idea of looking over the books I’ve read and having fond memories of them. Also, it’s kind of cool to stack them all up and say “wow, that’s a lot of readingâ€. However, it’s just not necessary for me (I say for me, because for others it totally is and that’s totally ok – I am picturing Jim curling into a ball and pulling his hair out… poor Jim). The reason I know it’s not necessary is the absence of one of my favorite books. I lent “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay†to Jol a while ago and never got it back. At first, I wanted to cry, but now that it’s not there, I totally don’t care. If I don’t care about a book that I’d put in my top 5, why do I have all these others on the shelf? So, they are going to the library this week, hopefully to make other people happy, happy.
I did decide to keep all gifts and ones that I just have to keep because I’ll either read them again, or I super super loved them and just need to save them. The books that made the cut are:
- A Confederacy of Dunces (an old version I bought used in Portland that has been ‘round the block more than a few times)
- A Prayer for Owen Meany (twas a gift from Kelly Johnson in college)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (my fave and was a gift from Momma Donna)
- Lord of the Rings (the trilogy in one book, gift from Josh and I’m a nerdy)
- In Cold Blood (sooo good)
- The Harry Potter series (for Ona some day)
There are 35 others that didn’t make the cut (a few of them technical geek books) and of those, the library probably won’t take 6 of them due to their condition (I wrote in them… Jim just died). I have lucky 13 on my “to read†part of the bookshelf, but now there is tons of room left on the shelf for stuff sitting on the floor now. Crazy.
(This is also my first blog using BlogJet, and so far, it’s the good stuff)
mmmmm BlogJet. Boo on the $43 it costs for a single user license. Seems pricey for a small tool but it helps me a lot.
pgrj. I am 99.9% positive I passed along Kavalier and Clay to Waldner, who tried to return it but you didn’t really care at that point if you got it back and thus he passed it along to a relative of his. Still, good book.
Good for you! I don’t think I could do that, though. My books are like limbs — getting rid of them would be like cutting off my arms or something. My CDs, on the other hand, have got to go…
Sorry, Jol, I should have added more context to that – didn’t mean to point blame all over the place. I’m actually very happy with how it worked out.
Dan – the CDs are next!! I wonder if I should get my ebay on with them? Last year I purged the DVD collection, even getting rid of Simpsons DVDs!
No real hair pulling or teeth gnashing on this end. Not everyone wants to be loaded down with hundreds of pounds of books they will likely never read again. Since Amy and I have so little room nowadays for books (our shelves are a little too full), I go through our books about once a year and try to thin the herd a bit. This usually just involves picking out the books I have read and either didn’t like or was indifferent to and giving them to Goodwill or to folks who I think would enjoy them.
As for the CDs, we took all of them out of their jewel cases and stuck the disks and accompanying liner booklets in big CD albums. Cutting around 1,200 CDs from the shelves freed up a lot of room for more books.
Awesome, Jim, I guess finding a place for the nearly 60 books you read each year would be difficult. Organizing 1200 CDs gives me wicked anxiety… did you alphabetize? Leave room for newcomers? Put together an index indicating which CD folder has which albums? The anxiety of such a task is way too much for me. Plus, I’m laaaaazy.
I have your copy of Kavalier and Clay…Jol gave it to me. Great book by the way!!!