True-to-life stories: book weeding/purging

[Extollager]

Thought I'd start a thread here where people could tell about the opposite of book hauls, namely book dispersals, weeding, purging, etc. Which books? What were their destinies? Perhaps some interesting narratives will appear here once in a while. Did you bring home batches of library discards, for example, only to decide, a while later, that most of 'em might as well have stayed on the discard table as far as you were concerned? What about outgrown interests? Duplicates? Undesired gifts?

I had some duplicate literary classics and some publisher's examination copies that made some students happy when I passed the books on to them.

Well, no, not this many:

I correspond with a Philadelphian who was active in sf and fantasy fandom back in the early 1960s (he wrote a nifty piece for Niekas on "Lovecraftian" elements in Tolkien). He kindly sent me a batch of fantasy and sf books basically for the cost of postage. Included was a hardcover of Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia -- anyone read that? I haven't yet -- so I passed on a paperback of the novel that I'd been carrying around for many years. Directly from this batch of books into the hands of a student, a hardcover single-volume edition of the three Gormenghast books!

 

[dask]

I sold the first five John Jakes Bicentennial books (all first editions) to a local second hand book store to make room. Started to read the first one a long time ago but didn't snag my interest. Gave away some self-help books I probably never should have gotten. The seventies weren't fun... and few mainstream thriller types I didn't think I was ever going to read.

 

[Jen526]

When I signed up for LibraryThing (*checks LT profile*) six years ago, I did a pretty major purge. It probably cut my library in half. Up until that point, I had NEVER gotten rid of any book, so I had boxes of books from my childhood, books I had to read in school, college textbooks... even some of my PARENTS' college textbooks, because my parents aren't readers, and when I moved out, ALL the books came with me. I didn't count, but there were a good 15-20 boxes of books to dispose of when I was done.

My local library has a book slot specifically for donations for their annual book sale. Rather than doing the sane thing and contacting someone to drop off the boxes in one go, I made a bunch of smaller trips, putting a box or so of books through that slot each trip. I've always wondered how vexed they were at me for the multiple piles o'books I left for someone to gather up, and how many of them got damaged by what sounded like a fairly hefty drop.

 

[Extollager]

My local library has a book slot specifically for donations for their annual book sale. Rather than doing the sane thing and contacting someone to drop off the boxes in one go, I made a bunch of smaller trips, putting a box or so of books through that slot each trip. I've always wondered how vexed they were at me for the multiple piles o'books I left for someone to gather up...

Your story reminds me of a couple of anecdotes that the librarian of our tiny, heritage-listed downtown Carnegie public library reportedly told about herself. She gardened and grew more -- perhaps lots more -- zucchini than she could use or, apparently, give away to people she knew; so she related that she left some (wasn't it a matter of boxes of it?) at the local hospital. I'd like to think that the foundling zucchini was indeed used by the hospital cooks.... On another occasion, according to herself, an auction was scheduled, and if I got this correctly, she placed boxes of her zucchini, or maybe it was unsold library discards, on the platform or flatbed along with the stuff that was supposed to be auctioned off! Sorry to be so fuzzy about the details -- these are stories I heard second-hand many years ago.