That was my late grandmother’s plan. My mother has the same plan now, and I’m not exactly aggressive about thinning the shelves myself. One of these days my kids are going to have a hell of a book sale. Or maybe a big bonfire.
Well, I have it easy in my current apartment- we have dumpsters in the parking garage that are right by the street, so everybody walking by has the opportunity to snag still-useful stuff. I just box up the books, LPs, clothes, whatever and place them next to the bin the day after collection, and they walk off within a day or two. It has really reduced my guilt, and I can spend my ebay energies on higher-yield items. So, maybe find a friend who lives in a sizeable apartment complex?
Also, I really question this:
Cite? for typical mass-market paperbacks? The paper turns brittle after less than a decade and the glue turns to powder within 20 years. True, a well made, acid-free (covers included) volume with sewn signatures can last into perpetuity with occasional maintenance and a correct environment, the type of books that the OP is describing are, by and large disposable. It’s nice if someone can get use out of them, but he is not their keeper just by virtue of possessing them.
Lazy? Wasteful?
Anyone who gives a banket judgement on those who’d put some old books in the trash rather than spend hours trying to find someone who might want them is foolish and ignorant.
See, I can play to.
I swear, some people sound like these are fragments of the true cross.
Full disclosure: I own about 1500 books. I’ve read damn near all of them and many of them get loaned out.
In fact, here’s a photo of some folks juggling in front of some of my books. 
For several years I worked at a used book store. When we had surplus books, we donated them to a local book bank. The book bank, in turn, supplied books to literacy projects, hospitals, nursing homes, jails, domestic violence shelters, and other places that needed books.
I had this article pointed out to me in another thread, I’ve found it helpful and insightful.
Stuff.
So you’re just going to continue to ignore people saying that finding a home for these books requires little more than a phone call to the local library.
While I don’t have a website cite, I do know what gets donated at my library and it routinely includes books from the turn of the century. I’m not saying all books do last that long, but many can.
But… the author of that article (about having too much stuff) specifically excludes books. 
Nobody’s perfect. 
Over all it’s an interesting attitude.
You might be surprised. My books are not genre books but pretty main stream fiction / creative non-fiction, and they are almost always trade paperbacks, not pocket paperbacks. They are relatively new and in good condition, one owner (me), one reader (me).
I took two boxes of books to the used book store here just a couple of weeks ago. I got $65 or $130 store credit (I went for the money), plus one half of a box worth of books back that they didn’t want.
When I reduced my library before moving cross country, I took three boxed of books to the used book store and got $93 for them.
Since we’re talking about stuff I was looking to get rid of and didn’t want anyway, that’s sizeable money to me.
Of course, if what you have is a yellowed and dog-eared 1975 copy of Valley of the Dolls with the last 25 pages missing, YMMV.
And one person’s “stuff” is another person’s treasure. I’m all for editing possessions down to a reasonable level, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t make a little money while we’re at it if we can.
I’m hip.
It’s not about them being ZOMG Books! It’s about them being useful, inherently reusable things that shouldn’t be treated as if they were disposable, when they’re not. I’ve thrown away (read: cut up and recycled) some ancient textbooks that are so out of date no one could possibly want them, and that’s a valid thing to do with those 1970s encyclopedias, too. But barring some disaster like dropping them in a puddle, books are rarely destroyed or even made substantially less desirable by having been used and to simply throw them away is wasteful.
I feel the same way about many other, non-book things. I don’t toss CDs that I don’t like in the garbage, either. I give away yarn that I’ve decided isn’t really my colour. I offer up old computers to people who might like to strip them for spare parts, and freecycle things I’ve bought or been given that turned out not to suit my taste or lifestyle. I throw away (or recycle where possible) food waste, crappy packaging, scraps of things that no one would find desirable, but perfectly useful objects that I have no need for anymore are not garbage.
I didn’t see this mentioned yet, and it’s a pretty nifty way to get rid of books you don’t want: http://www.bookcrossing.com/. I don’t have a lot of books - I use the library - but I did release some books into the wild a couple years ago. It was really neat when the person who found them posted about it on the website. It takes a little bit of time to write the info in the books, so maybe you’ll only want to do a handful. But it’s worth a try!
Don’t forget the potential tax deduction if you donate them. Most Salvation Army/Goodwill/St. Vincent DePaul have books, and I can never find enough fantast/sci fi. They get mostly romance novels.
StG
I normally give books to friends and family (if i enjoyed the book). but i also give a lot to Books For Africa
Books were made, generally, of much better materials 100 years ago. Acid free paper was the norm, most of it being made of cotton rags, rather than cheap, bleached tree pulp like today. Heck, even newspapers back in the day were made on better paper than todays mass-market paperbacks.
Further, the super old books that are getting donated to your library aren’t perfect-bound, are they? That would surprise the heck out of me. I don’t hesitate to whip out my clips and PVA and re-bind a paperback that’s worth reading, but it’s more trouble than I would go to for 99.9% of books, even old ones.
I’m not trying to say that one should just chuck books in the incinerator when you’re done reading them, but at a certain point they are consumer goods and shouldn’t be a burden. There is a difference between your 17th printing mass-market copy of Dune and a lovely hardcover that somebody will care enough about to keep, even if you don’t, and that will actually reward that care by staying together and readable for decades.
I’ve always appreciated the approach of the charity, Books for Africa.
http://www.susanisaacs.com/news/katrina.php
http://www.booksfirst.org/index.php
Donate them to a worthy charity. I know that after Katrina, there were hundreds of local libraries where all the books were ruined. I’m sure some of them are still trying to recover. A few minutes google searching on book donations turns up dozens of hits. So pass them on to someone having a difficult time right now.
Donating your books is a great idea. And eBay is a good way to sell some good stuff.
I’ve found that Half Prices Books will take anything. Also CD’s, records, DVD’s, software, etc. If you want to unload a bunch of stuff–which is not worth a lot to you–Half Price Books will keep it out of the landfill. And give you some money in exchange.
I can’t speak for all Half-Price stores, but the one we used to go to in Austin was very clear that they would take anything, but any of that which they didn’t think they could sell went straight into the industrial-sized garbage can they keep in the receiving area. I had a conversation with a clerk there about whether I should take back all our stuff they were throwing out, and give it to (for instance) the Goodwill next door. She told me it would most likely end up being a hassle for a charity to deal with, as they would be even less likely than Half-Price to find buyers, and it would end up in the same dumpster after all. (Mind you, they only tossed about 10% of what we brought them, and that included guides to common but obsolete software.)