Too many books

gettingby said:

How do you handle this when you know you already have too many books?

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I buy more books.

PeteMC said:

I buy more books.

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And a new bookshelf.

It's a problem, really.

I do culls once in a while, and having a tight budget has cut down significantly on the inflow. I used to take rejects to Half Price Books, but they pay terribly now, so these days I foist them off on a relative who has one of those Little Free Libraries at their house.

Still have too many of the things, and a to-be-read pile well into the double digits... physical and e-books included. (I cash out my change jar periodically for an Amazon certificate via Coinstar. Just too convenient, though it really just trades one clutter - coins - for another.)

I'm lucky, in that our library system has a semi-annual used book sale, and is always accepting donations of gently used books. I manage to unload quite a few that way (in the hopes that they'll find a good "forever home").

Even with that, I have six bookcases, each with groaning, sway-backed shelves, of volumes that I can't bring myself to part with. It's not just a problem, I'm afraid it may be a sickness.

I don't mind if people call me a hoarder! At least it's a well-organized, contained hoard.

I'm about to have a major cull and want to pull us back to one bookcase. Right now we have a book room/library (basically a large cupboard) stuffed to the gills with books.

However, between Google and my Kindle I'm not really going in there too often and I'm wondering why I have my books.

I have limited space, too. i suspect we all do because there is no such thing as enough space. I've had to get rid of 2,000 books twice. i've also weeded out another thousand on a now and then, a few at a time basis.

Despite this weeding, I still have almost three thousand print books in my TBR collection along, not counting all the books I've read, but love too much to get rid of, or the thousands on my computer.

paddismac said:

I'm lucky, in that our library system has a semi-annual used book sale, and is always accepting donations of gently used books. I manage to unload quite a few that way (in the hopes that they'll find a good "forever home").

Even with that, I have six bookcases, each with groaning, sway-backed shelves, of volumes that I can't bring myself to part with. It's not just a problem, I'm afraid it may be a sickness.

I don't mind if people call me a hoarder! At least it's a well-organized, contained hoard.

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Our library has the same kind of sales, but I never donate books. I'm the guy there buying those used books by the hundreds.

There is no such thing as too many books, although hubby would disagree.

I cull periodically. First I offer them to a friend. If she or her hubby don't want them, I give them to a used book store not far away that I want to see stay in business.

MM

Our basement was reno'd and I have a new space to myself now. I cleared out a bunch of books, it's down to one shelf now, but my personal problem is comics. I have a whole file drawer of silver age comics, plus two short boxes overflowing with things from the 90's to mid 2000, and one longbox. I don't know what to do.

I tend to donate books to the local children's hospital because patients and family need a distraction. The moment I found a copy of Sleepers in my hospital book shelf during a stay was the moment that changed my life and I decided my books go to hospitals so someone else languishing in a bed with tubes in 'em can find that one perfect book. (Sleepers, for all it's child abuse horror is one of my comfort movies. Don't ask.)

I've started purchasing e-books for that reason, but still have shelves overflowing with actual books. I do periodic culls, going through and donating what I no longer need. But I can't help but feel this is a losing battle. Maybe I should just admit defeat and turn my room over to the books.

When I moved in 2001, I had enough books to fill my fullsized pickup clear to the topper's roof... twice.

Now I have more books. And I just moved. The moving company's estimate was around 8000 pounds, just for the books.

I need to rethink this library shit.

Meanwhile, I wonder if the usedbook stores I used to hit downtown are still here?

PeteMC said:

I buy more books.

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Me too.

TAMaxwell said:

And a new bookshelf.

It's a problem, really.

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There Is A Solution.

Books I buy don't leave my property until they're physically unable to be read. I'm not so well-off that I can buy enough books to cause a storage problem.

Random anecdote: On my parents' bookshelf, there's this book called something like 'The Trail of Livingstone'. It's been there literally as long as I can remember, which involves surviving a fair number of moves, including two interstate ones. A month or so ago, Dad was looking for something to read and picked it up. It turned out to be a boring story about a group of missionaries going to Africa. Best bit? After discussing it for a while, the family concluded that even though we've had it for close to thirty years nobody had ever read the book.

(Still true - it's not exactly a page-turner.)

These days, I buy a lot of ebooks, and I sort of doubt I'll ever reach a point where I have too many ebooks. There are always storage methods, and the nice thing about the Kindle is that you can take off stuff that you don't need to have readily available, but put it back on later if you want.

With my hard copies, I'm very hesitant about getting rid of things. Especially since I expect my living situation to change within the next few years, and hope to have more room for shelves when I move. I get rid of books when I feel confident that I won't want to read them again, even if it takes several years for me to get to that point.

The older I get, the more nostalgic I become about books. Lately, I find myself thinking sometimes about books I had as a kid that I no longer know the titles of, or that can't be found in their older forms anymore. There are a few things I wish I'd kept.

I just mentioned on another thread that I thin my herd about twice a year. I used to be horrified about parting with books, but then I moved 1000 miles away. Twice. Now I find it more important to own the books I love the most, and have a connection with, as opposed to owning books just for the sake of it. I have limited space to spend on books I hate. Nobody would call me a minimalist; there are over 1000 books in my house.

auzerais said:

I just mentioned on another thread that I thin my herd about twice a year. I used to be horrified about parting with books, but then I moved 1000 miles away. Twice.

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I did the same thing (okay, it was only 900 miles each way), and that's what prompted me to build bookshelves that I can move with the books on them (see my "there is a solution" link). I can move hundreds of books per minute on a hand truck and without having to actually pick them up.

benbradley said:

There Is A Solution.

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Now that's a good trick. Reason it works being that the shelves are short enough that they don't have any flex, so nothing breaks when you hoist the whole thing up and make away with it. Also means heavy books won't bend the shelves. (I have that problem with, believe it or not, a shelf that was made to house legal volumes, which probably outweigh all other forms of book.)

I need to build a whole new set of shelves that halfway match, instead of the random collection that's followed me home over the years (and includes artifacts like a pair of gutted stereo speakers... actually those work right well, I wish I had a whole pile of 'em). I like your idea, tho here they'd need to be fixed together cuz they won't all be braced to a wall.

SianaBlackwood said:

Books I buy don't leave my property until they're physically unable to be read. I'm not so well-off that I can buy enough books to cause a storage problem.

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Me neither, but I've been collecting 'em for <thinking... crap, I already had a collection by the time I was five!!> multiple decades, and it's kinda like greasy buildup that way... This has involved a great deal of scrounging. Back when I traveled semi-regularly, I'd hit every usedbook store along my route.

I hope that my kids will read them all one day and make me feel useful.

gettingby said:

How often do you clean out your library?

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In 2003, when I moved from Canada to Sri Lanka to marry my husband, I ditched all my books. No reasonable way to ship them, plus the husband had many of the same books as I had. That cleared out somewhere between many hundreds of books. Then the husband and I left Sri Lanka for, well, other parts, and left his books behind (they're still there in his parent's house as far as we know), so that cleared out many hundreds more books.

We've gone with only digital since around 2008, possibly earlier. If it's not digital, we don't get it. And our collection climbs again... But at least now, it doesn't take up much room.

Divide into 1st and 2nd class of joy and importance what you have--the smaller 1st class being what you can't imagine being without, and would insist the kids read--and donate the larger 2nd class to whoever is easiest: charity library, school library, thrift stores... That way, all that lovely reading material is back in circulation, you have done a good deed, and have cleared space. Do that once a decade, and you're not a crazy hoarder--you're a mild-mannered philanthropist

And if you ever really, really, need to reread something from the 2nd class--you can always find it again, most likely on the internet.

The Kindle has taken the heat off, but I still have to do a cull a couple of times a year. I don't have much more space to put more books and no room to store them away in boxes.

I figure if it's something I'm not likely to read again, I don't need it for "reference" (whatever the heck I mean by that) or want to keep it for sentimental reasons, I'd rather donate it to the charity shop or the local library. Better for someone to be reading it than have it gathering dust on my shelves.

My local library branch was closed by the council in cuts and is now run by volunteers, so they have a very limited budget for buying new books, so donating to them either for the library or for their fundraising book sales feels like a worthy cause.

SianaBlackwood said:

Books I buy don't leave my property until they're physically unable to be read. I'm not so well-off that I can buy enough books to cause a storage problem.

Random anecdote: On my parents' bookshelf, there's this book called something like 'The Trail of Livingstone'. It's been there literally as long as I can remember, which involves surviving a fair number of moves, including two interstate ones. A month or so ago, Dad was looking for something to read and picked it up. It turned out to be a boring story about a group of missionaries going to Africa. Best bit? After discussing it for a while, the family concluded that even though we've had it for close to thirty years nobody had ever read the book.

(Still true - it's not exactly a page-turner.)

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Hah, my great-great uncle (Donald Fraser) wrote that book. Yeah, I agree. Not a page-turner.