So I’m thinking like myself lots of other dopers face issues of books piling up around the house. Even if you have floor to ceiling shelves, or a dedicated room, no matter, still they pile up!
And all too often we are faced with the very trying task of deciding what will stay and what will go. To nursing homes, or literacy programs, or used book stores, doesn’t matter. It’s hard for book lovers regardless.
But the hard facts are this is the computer age and bookstores are disappearing fast, the entire publishing world has been in transition for ages it seems. We’ve all been listening to how books are going to go the way of the dinosaurs and publishing is doomed, etc, etc.
I have a lot of books, they have their own room. It’s not enough. I have a Kobo, which is okay for some times, but real books can’t be beat for me.
I find myself torn between feeling I should move with the times, empty my library and bask in the spaciousness and freedom that must surely result, and keep my books, and build more shelves in the face of knowing the home library is soon to be a quaint thing of the past, that you just won’t see any more. Somehow knowing all personal libraries may soon be unheard of almost increases the appeal in some way, I think.
How about it? Ever just emptied your life of books? How did it feel? Was it freeing? Can you envision a future where you surrender all your books, either to go digital, or to downsize, save space, whatever?
Sometimes reading is just reading, and sometimes reading is a ritual.
I have a Nook. It’s very convenient. I love it and use it often, and it’s become indispensable for travel, but it’s just not the same. Sometimes I just want to read, and the ereader is fine, even superior. Sometimes I want the full experience of a book, and the gadget just doesn’t cut it. There are too many sensory notes missing for it to offer the same kind of comfort to a lifelong bibliophile.
My library is staying put for the foreseeable future. It may get periodic updates–I have some duplicates I ought to give away or trade in, if nothing else–but I’m not giving it up.
Do what makes you happy, not what the market is telling you should make you happy. Who cares if nobody else will have a physical home library? Who cares if ebooks are “the future”? That doesn’t matter. You’re not keeping a home library for anyone else. If you like it, keep it. However, if you continually fantasize about turning that room into something else, maybe it’s time to let the books go.
I would never get rid of my books, though. I want a library room filled with them. The most I do is go through them every few years and get rid of books I don’t think I’ll read ever again.
I’m with Macca26 - while I occasionally weed out the home library of books that I either don’t plan to read again (or don’t think I’ll ever get to after all), I still like the look of full (even overly-full!) bookshelves. Most of my collection are used books & that’s still my general preference for purchasing, as I’m a bit cheap That said, there are a few authors for whom I’ll spring for hot-off-the-presses.
That said, I am also working on replicating the best-loved portion of physical library in digital form - I’ve managed to collect most of Kurt Vonnegut’s works as they go on periodic sale at Amazon; and am slowly working on my Pratchett Discworld collection as well.
Where do audiobooks fit into this paradigm? I have both physical and digital versions of these as well.
I’ve occasionally made some room by picking books I’ve had for years and KNOW Ill never read. Put 'em in a cardboard box and drive them down to the branch library.
The books I tend to keep are the reference types. Cookbooks, interior decorating books, homesteading books.
I also tend to keep sets. I’ll never let go of my Everyday Life In (insert ancient culture) books, or my Puffin hardcover children’s classics, or my blue-leatherette Agatha Christies (all 88, thank you).
The novels are slowly being weeded out. To some degree I want them around just so that, some day, my daughter might casually pick them up to read. To tell the truth that’s the only reason most of them are still around, though. I do all my reading on my Kindle these days.
I’ve gotten rid of 95% of my physical books. They are heavy, dusty, and I don’t tend to find sentimental or ritualistic value in most objects. And for me, getting rid of them was liberating. I read just as much as ever, but I don’t have to think about shelves, or walls, or storage for books.
But that’s me. We all find comfort in different things. For me, it’s in the freedom of not having so many books. For you, it might be the luxury of being surrounded by something you cherish.
I cannot get rid of books. I figure I have several thousand. But I have to dispose of them. I have to empty my house and move to an apartment close to one of my kids (which one is another insoluble problem) since my wife and I simply have to face the fact that a two storey house and all the maintenance are not our future. Books, records, tapes, not to mention dishes (our own plus what we inherited from parents, who inherited from their parents), real silverware which we never use (it tarnishes) and so on.
I also got rid of 95% of my books. I literally picked up anything that I haven’t re-read and got rid of it - library, Goodwill, or the trash if no one wanted it.
My home is SO MUCH less cluttered. I love it.
I am like jsgoddess in that I have very little nostalgia or sentimentality and there is an ease to reading from Kindle that heavy books don’t have. And if I want real books? Library is only a couple of miles away.
I moved two times in two years. That was the final CLICK! I decided I was not carrying heavy boxes of books I was never going to read.
There is not one room in my house that does not have books in it. We have gone through our stash occasionally and donated books that we are sure we do not want to read again. We have actually discarded books that were soaked in a flood and developed mold.
I love books and find the electronic versions difficult to read. I cannot imagine emptying my life of books or surrendering them in any way.
Too many books - this is a Thing? I do have tons of books but the ones I keep tend to have more meaning, or whatever. Trade paperbacks and hardbacks that I will definitely never read again go away. What’s the point in keeping them? I’d rather they get read and enjoyed by someone else, so…
I have a couple of friends with whom I trade books. Or give books to.
Also, I trade in my used books at a used book store (remember book stores?) So I can get a deal on…more books!
I’ve also sold quite a few on eBay.
Or advertised free boxes of them on craigslist, grouped by genre, and given them to the person who sent me the nicest and most literate response.
I’ve never donated to a library for their annual sale but that’s also a good option.
Occasionally I will acquire a book that is truly fucking awful and should not be read by anyone, ever. Those I use for kindling. in my fire pit.
I too have a dedicated room for my books, but a couple of shelves have oozed their way into my bedroom now. I have thinned my books by about 15%, but need to do more.
I also have come to a tough decision. My collection of National Geographic magazines lives in my mother’s attic. Since the recent death of my father I’ve decided that, although I love my collection, I need to find someone else who needs it more. But the collection is huge. I have every single issue from 1914 to the present, and all the maps are present. They’re boxed chronologically and each issue is in a plastic slipcover. So how do I divest myself of them?
My cookbook collection is huge too. I’m thinking of thinning it out by at least a third.
Paperbacks don’t last. As they crumble or the spines crack, I get rid of them. The hardbacks are staying, but I’m slowly replacing the paperbacks with Kindle books. I love the fact that I carry a large library in my pocket to read in line at the grocery store or waiting for a movie to start or waiting for a bus. I don’t like waiting.
I have never once got rid off, either by sale or gift, any book willingly.
I will will kill myself and take half the world with me if necessary should my books be threatened.
I thoroughly despise electronic reading, despite downloading just for completion many strange Google and Gutenberg books which I have no prospect of reading.
Physical books rank after cats, but before people.
I got rid of at least half of my books and at this point the only reason I’ll purchase a physical book is if it’s not available digitally. I have no regrets. If every book I owned was suddenly digitized I’d be cool with that. The fact that I can carry a library’s worth of reading material in my purse will never cease to amaze and delight me.
With the exception of the comics. We have Marvel Unlimited for digital comics and it’s great, but I’d argue comics lose more integrity than text-based books when they are digitized.
I love my physical books, and believe the quote, a room without books is a room without a soul. I do have a Kindle, with a couple hundred books on it, good for travel or for light reading, but it is a poor substitute for a physical book, and Amazon a piss-poor substitute for a good, well-stocked physical bookstore with educated, literate buyers. I try to keep my physical books pared down to aroud 3,000, which means lots of donations to the Friends of the Library sales, and constant weeding.
I am working on this right now. It’s only very recently that I’ve arrived at this state. And I moved every two years for about 16 years. I thought I thinned the herd significantly before my last move 7 years ago. But it’s still too many.
What got me over the sentimentality was emptying my mother’s house. She lived alone in a 2 story 3 bedroom house. My sister and I both live in 2 bedroom apartments, (with other people). I filled cartons with books of hers that “meant something” to me. Not just ones that I remembered her reading to us, or were significant. Her paperback copy if Ivanhoe was in every home she’d lived in since I was born. so was her brown leather bound volume of 100 Famous Poems I drove them all to my place, where there were already too many books.
Then I imagined my son in 20 years (or more, here’s hoping - but my mom was 20 years older than I am when she died) staring at shelves thinking "What am I supposed to do with this now? Times two if I keep her books and my books.
I have no plans or hope to be entirely book free, but I have reduced the number of tall bookcases in the living room by one, and by the time I’m finished donating I expect that the shelves of the remaining two will have space to display a few objet d’art alongside some books.
I’m not going to reread all of the books I saved from college. Someone will be happy to buy my copies of many of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels from Better World Books. There is a collection bin for donations in a spot that easy to stop at during my drive to work. I’ve been taking a box or two every few days. There is a local charity that will take older books that I suspect won’t have much resale value.
Many of the books I’ve had for years and years have memories attached to them in my brain. I made a separate list of them on Goodreads. I have the same emotional reaction to skimming the list as I did to browsing a shelf.
I do have the extremely good fortune of living in a county with an absolutely kick ass library system. I am confident I will never lack for books I can hold.
It’s not just happening to my books, either. Nothing in my home is safe except a few true family heirlooms. I thought I’d have my home looking just how I want it to by the end of the summer, but I’ve adjusted my expectation to the end of this year.
You can have my dead tree books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
I’m sure I got that quote wrong, but I’m sure you get it. We have a room dedicated to books. I schelped boxes and boxes to a different state when I got married…and left a lot of other stuff behind.
I like my Kindle so much that I’m on the “unlimited” program, but I still love curling up with a dead tree book in the evenings. A book, a cat and a mug of hot chocolate…what could be better.
However, when the dead books start stacking up because there is no room for them on the shelves, we spend an afternoon weeding the collection. This is actually a fun process because we get to open old favorites and put them on the table for re-reading. The ones we agree that we don’t need/want anymore go to the library.
The last decade or so has been one of relatively mobility for me. Putting them in storage or moving them produced some phased cleaning out.
Books that clearly made the cut to keep were ones I didn’t except to every find in any format again and would likely be read or reference in the future. Not everything is just sitting out there in the public domain or waiting to be purchased. To get rid of there’s the “did I ever read that more than once” question. If that’s a bit too extreme after you make the pile of one timers pick half to keep and possibly read in the next couple months and set a “read by” date . Store them marked or segregated in some way. If they get read they go back in the library. If not when the end date comes they go as well.
That said, there are a few authors for whom I’ll spring for hot-off-the-presses.