Tales of Book Purges, Culls, Weeding, etc.

[Overread]

For far the only purging of books I've had has been ones that were purged by my aunt and handed onto me - a selection of curiosities that were interesting, but which I've never found the time to read or pick up and thus have steadily been pushed out into boxes for auction.

That said I have kind of hit the sane limit for storage where I am so I've managed to stave off purging books by investing in ebooks which take up far less space. Granted they are not as nice as having books on the shelves, but they at least let me hold a good collection without having to swap my mattress for a stack of books.

 

[BigBadBob141]

REF: Dask.
Yes, I've read "Child 44" .
Not a bad thriller, first of three, but I haven't the rest yet.

 

[soulsinging]

I used to have hundreds, broad collections of mostly genre fiction: Chandler, Hammett, Bruen, Connolly, Tolkien, GRRM, Abercrombie... plus dozens of classics from my undergrad lit studies (Delillo, McCarthy, Dickens, Beowulf) and current fiction and more. I was pretty proud of it actually. But at the end of the day, economic necessity had had me living in 20-odd addresses over the last 15 years or so, and moving so many boxes of heavy books (plus the shelves to put them on) wore me out and I whittled my collection down to under 10 in the last 2 years. Only my absolute favorites that I felt I might reread.

It's expanded since to 2 shelves (plus a Nabakov collection I inherited from a friend I lost to addiction recently), but I regularly trade in books to the used store to maintain about that amount. I've hung onto a lot social comment/dystopia (orwell, vonnegut, catch-22, kafka's trial, flowers for algernon) plus a few sff favs (silmarillion, dragonlance chronicles, SW thrawn trilogy, jurassic park, harry potter) and a few epics (godfather, lonesome dove, pillars of the earth).

Now that my wife and I are expecting our first child, I toy with the idea of expanding again. It would be nice (or maybe just vain and pretentious) to have all the books I read for my degree (if I can reconstruct each syllabus somehow). I certainly want to impress an appreciation for books and reading on the young one! But I feel like actually reading will do that more than piles of books, especially since I treat those few I have with such reverence now. My wife rolls her eyes whenever she catches me sitting in front of the shelf pawing through my books, to-read shelf, and store-bound bag trying to decide which ones are worthy.

 

[Extollager]

"I whittled my collection down to under 10 in the last 2 years" -- under 100 maybe?

 

[Hugh]

I can feel a cull approaching, but I'm putting it off.

I know it's coming though.

If I find enough distractions, I may even be able to put it off for three or four months.

 

[soulsinging]

"I whittled my collection down to under 10 in the last 2 years" -- under 100 maybe?

Nope, 10. I think I actually only had a half dozen when I moved up here, though I guess that was 3-4 years ago actually. I'm up to maybe near 30 now? I'll post a photo.

 

[Extollager]

Wow! That's impressive.

 

[Amberlen]

ahh, once upon a time i had more books than space to stack them.still do really. ones i regret letting go:
the entire Mars series by Burroughs in paperbacks illustrated by Gino D'Achille (my fave covers for these books are his) (Ballantine)
the entire John Norman Gor series in paperback illustrated by Boris Vallejo(another fave)
tons of Dragonlance novels
1980s paperback Hobbit/ LOTR box set with the cool illustrations on the side
Dragonriders of Pern-Dragonflight through The White Dragon, and also Moreta, Nerilka,Masterharper, etc..but none of the dolphins and whatnot

 

[Extollager]

Another bookish thread is hereby activated. Have we any new stories of culls, purges, etc.?

 

[dask]

Took about ten westerns over to the road side library about half a block away the other day.

 

[Extollager]

That might have made someone's day!

 

[Extollager]

This thread is intended not so much as a place for thinking about maybe disposing of some books,* as of telling about having done so: why you decided to dispose of books, how hard or easy that was, what methods you used for deciding what to retain and what to loose, the sense of relief at letting go, the regret over a book you wish you'd kept -- and remember that it's (often) not all about the you (and the books), but also about the people who came next for those books: the used book dealer who bought your book or gave you trading credit for it (or didn't), the friend or family member who accepted a book (or didn't), the donation of books to Friends of the Library -- and any other relevant stories and reflections from this aspect of your book life.

For a while, I kept track of books I gave away in a pocket diary, but I've ceased doing that since the time has come when most of the books I give away are books other people give to me to give away (or, occasionally, to keep): friends in the Seattle area and Philadelphia send me boxes of books to keep or, mostly, to offer on the freebie table on the third floor of the Main Building on campus. I've given away hundreds of books from my late father's collection (and kept a bunch too).

I did, however, recently give away my 1989 Britannica set to a family member, and promptly filled up the space with art books that had been shelved elsewhere, etc.

*For posting about that, go here:

So Many Books, but Limited Reading Time and Lifespan

I ran across this essay by Joseph Epstein earlier today & thought it belonged in this Chrons thread. To go from 2000 to 400 books -- ! But the author lives near one or more big libraries....

Books Won't Furnish a Room

After more than a decade, our apartment is being repainted. Rugs have gone off for cleaning. Furniture that we have had for more than twenty years is being replaced. The sense of a new leaf is upon me, which has brought on the urge to live, somehow, differently than I have until now. No way could…

www.washingtonexaminer.com

 

[Rufus Coppertop]

I gave away my Song of Ice and Fire paperbacks, the five I owned. After reading the fifth one (I think it was the fifth) I realized I didn't care enough about the story or any of the characters to wait for the next book, and someone at work expressed an interest. I did not regret it.

The only book I ever tossed out was The Eyes of God by John Marco. I disliked it so much, I felt it would be irresponsible to inflict the experience on anyone else. Looking back, maybe someone else could have enjoyed it (it does have good reviews along with the bad ones,) but it certainly felt like the right thing to do at the time.

That happened to me by Season Four of the series. Didn't care. Couldn't be bothered watching.

 

[Bramandin]

I had a set of ten books that came with an encyclopedia. I asked my aunt to drop them off at the library; they don't take encyclopedia but a set of fiction might go. She instead gave it to a friend who had a granddaughter.

Old tech books for college, there was a book-specific bin by the firehouse. I'm not sure if they're gone-through for reselling or just pulped for recycling... I later found the caddy with the included CD and dumped that in the bin on vain hope that they'd find their books.

 

[Rodders]

An idle thought. Would it be possible to set up a sort of market place on the Chronicles?