I love the feeling of them, the weight of them, the smell that you only get when you have a sufficient density of books in a room. I love the reality of them. I'm never going to be one of those people who makes the transition to electronic books, because they just aren't real enough for me. I say this as someone who writes books on a computer, and rarely, if ever prints them out before they hit the final draft; I realize it's not a rational way to be. It's just how I'm wired. It doesn't help that I'm an obsessive packrat who collects basically everything you can think of. When Pokemon was big, the core philosophy -- 'gotta catch 'em all' -- made total sense to me. I just chose to apply it to books.
All my life I've wandered through used bookstores, looking at the shelves and wondering how anyone could ever, ever let some of those volumes out of their hands. I've seriously theorized that certain books must have come from estate sales following the tragic deaths of their owners, because otherwise, how could they have wound up on that shelf? There's just no way the parting was voluntary. The knowledge that someday, my books will be on those shelves, books with my name on them, cast into the chilling world of the second-hand tome, just doesn't compute. Once you own a book, it's yours forever, right?
Right?
Recently, the rapidly shrinking floor space in my home has forced me to take a long, hard look at this philosophy, and admit that, perhaps, there are things in life more important than owning every book ever published by Leisure Horror. Like, y'know, being able to find my way to the bathroom. And not being one of those 'human interest' stories about the woman found a week after the big earthquake, smothered under the weight of her own toppled anthology collection. Also, I'm trying to raise money to go to WorldCon in Australia in 2010, and selling some of the books I have no intention of ever reading again seems like a good way to start. And I have books I'm never going to read again. I try to pretend that I don't, but I do. There are books I only get the urge to read every six or seven years, and that's one thing. There are reference books, and that's another thing. But works of fiction whose contents have long since ceased to appeal to me in any meaningful way? Yeah, those can go.
Getting rid of books is at once entirely alien to me and deeply cathartic. This book I didn't like? I'm not obligated to keep it. This book I liked just fine but haven't read since 1992, and wow, the idea of reading it now ceases to appeal after three pages? It can go. This book here that was the literary equivalent of a bad Science-Fiction Channel Original Movie? It was fun once, I'm not buying the DVD, the novelization can go. Suddenly, it's possible that I might be able to put the books I actually want back on the shelves. Suddenly, I can see the floor.
It's all very strange.
But kinda cool.
August 4 2008, 17:31:23 UTC 8 years ago
Not that I still throw very much out, mind you. They're still Comic Books, after all.
August 4 2008, 17:53:39 UTC 8 years ago
August 4 2008, 17:32:07 UTC 8 years ago
August 4 2008, 17:36:36 UTC 8 years ago
I've actually gotten rid of several boxes of books in the past year. I sent a big box to a friend of mine who's stuck in a rehab facility. He was apparently VERY popular with the ladies due to all the romances I included in the box. If you have such a place nearby, you might see if they'd like some of your cast-offs.
August 4 2008, 17:39:24 UTC 8 years ago
We recycled some of them such as old computer books so outdated no one would want them ever again. We gave some away. But the best thing I found was a bookstore that sells new and used books and gives you store credit to buy new books for your old books. Oh, what a delight for a booklover like moi. At a ratio of 2.5/1 I am slowly culling the bookshelves whilst still feeding my habit.
*smiles*
bibliophile
August 4 2008, 17:59:28 UTC 8 years ago
Re: bibliophile
August 4 2008, 18:20:29 UTC 8 years ago
Yes, I definitely would like several of these. I could line them up side by side and pile more bookshelves on top and we could have aisles in our library in addition to the wall to wall books.
Now I just need to find a way to come up with another $14,000.
*giggles*
August 4 2008, 17:47:18 UTC 8 years ago
Which, er, I never have managed to give to the library or sell to a used bookstore. *facepalm*
August 4 2008, 18:29:22 UTC 8 years ago
But almost all of my books are there because I want to reread them. Not necessarily now, or even in a predictable time, but I know that sometime I will want to read "that book" and it will be OOP (and these days public libraries seem to not stock many OOP books, they don't have the storage space).
August 4 2008, 20:18:56 UTC 8 years ago
And you can't always count on once-popular authors [or even some still-popular authors backlist - frex, ever realize you were missing only one early Mercedes Lackey Valdamar 2nd-part-of-a-trilogy book and the library doesn't have it?! 'tis a truly maddening case of plotus interruptus] being on their shelves, either. Me, I collect John Dickson Carr, aka Carter Dickson, who was known as the master of the locked room mystery and often wrote 3-4 books a year during his heyday (1930s-1970s). A lot of his books were never issued in hardback and I still have several gaps that I fear may only be fillable by paperbacks so brittle I'd be afraid to read them. :(
August 4 2008, 18:40:11 UTC 8 years ago
But almost all of my books are there because I want to reread them. Not necessarily now, or even in a predictable time, but I know that sometime I will want to read "that book" and it will be OOP (and these days public libraries seem to not stock many OOP books, they don't have the storage space).
"I don't love these!"
August 4 2008, 17:53:50 UTC 8 years ago
The first day that I worked on this, Runnerwolf wandered into my room to check on me, and I asked her what she thought. I broke down into giggles at the expression on her face. I'd describe it as, "Gee, that's really great, and I *know* you've been putting a lot of work into this, but I honestly don't see any difference, and I have no idea how to tell you that..."
This was, of course, followed by me unpacking boxes of my books that had been sitting in our garage for *mumble*-years. That was a lot of fun, in the "Oh, hey, I did own a copy of that!" sense. I did get rid of a lot of duplicates, and sort out the ones I didn't want to keep, and then moving on to the next box.
August 4 2008, 17:56:45 UTC 8 years ago
I really know the feeling though. My father used to joke that for me reading wasn't enough, I would devour them, then restore them, and hoard them as though I was Smaug sitting on his pile of treasure.
Halimede and I have long ago learned to not count books. Instead we count Cubic meters of them.
As the concrete floor of our apartment is starting to buckle, we decided to get rid of some books ourselves.
A week ago, the ABC here in Amsterdam had a 'book return day'. They were rather surprised to see us bring in about 200. I think we helped in making it a really good day for them :)
The weird thing is that 200 books (big ones too!) just doesn't make a dent. I can't even see holes on the shelves. O.o
August 4 2008, 18:28:23 UTC 8 years ago
When I moved my office from one which accommodated 5 bookshelves to one which only takes a single lone solitary one, I decided to cull my books. As fate would have it, there was a non-profit down the road that was having a book sale near that time period. I gave them about 400 books and thought it would make oh such a difference at home. Could I tell? Not in the least. In fact our library became more crowded because I had to bring those bookshelves home. LOL.
August 4 2008, 19:32:33 UTC 8 years ago
August 4 2008, 19:42:27 UTC 8 years ago
August 4 2008, 19:59:54 UTC 8 years ago
One of the perks.
Free books shelves on every floor.
3 times a year we can order 5 free books.
My department allows me to order 2 free books every month.
I'm happy.
I also get to share my good fortune w/ others. That's even better.
August 4 2008, 21:54:07 UTC 8 years ago
August 4 2008, 23:35:43 UTC 8 years ago
August 5 2008, 08:28:35 UTC 8 years ago
There's also about 2k other books divided between my mum's loft and my friend's parent's loft.
I do try to get rid of them, it's just that I have so many, so it takes a few years to notice any difference.