Too many books

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stormie

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I have at least one bookshelf in almost every room of the house (I skip the bathrooms, the basement, and the attic). I do a book-clean-out about once a year and donate what I won't read again because it wasn't that great, to the library for their quarterly book/magazine sale. My Kindle, though, has saved me from my books overrunning the house, and now I can keep even the ones I'm not crazy about.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Nowadays, a book has to have a stunning cover for me to buy it hardcopy. Most books I buy are ebooks, to save shelf space for those beautiful physical books.

I'm the opposite. I detest e-books, and own them only when they're nonfiction that I need to read, or because I get them free, one way or another. I don't care at all about the cover of the print books I have. I don't even look at a cover, except to read the jacket synopsis.

Most of my keeper books are hard cover, and at least half don't even have dust jackets.
 

AshleyEpidemic

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Yeah. I have a problem. I just buy more storage. I've yet to purge. I just find more creative ways to store my books. I've also come to accept that I don't always need them on display. Since I moved to Texas, I didn't have all my books. I still don't, some are still at home in Jersey. I'm slowly bringing them over and expanding storage.

Then again, I go to the library frequently, so I don't own all the books I read. I also only buy books I'm certain I love. If I don't love it or at least really enjoy it, I give it away almost immediately. Thus every book on myself is a book I would read again, even if I don't have immediate plans to or I've yet to read. That helps quite a bit.
 

nighttimer

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Here's my philosophy on old and unwanted books: What I cannot sell or give away I throw away.

It's nice to be sentimental if you have the storage space, but I've been culling the herd of my books for a while now. I've just about purged the basement of all the old magazines and newspapers I've collected over the years. The paperbacks are ghost. The main problem is getting rid of all these comic books. Nothing is more useless than an old comic book.

Between the missus and myself we have whittled it down to the bookcase built in the wall for me and hers on the last two shelves with DVDs taking up the top three rows. We don't do Kindle and have no plans to buy one. We still prefer a physical Honest-to-Harriet book when we read.

Call us old. We don't care. :rolleyes:
 

KTC

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I don't like paper books anymore. I stopped getting them because I found I wouldn't open them because I hate them. Kindle app on my phone is the only way I read books now. I have trees where my books used to be.
 

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I hate e-books

I have a Kindle, but I bought it only for downloading books I have been asked to review. For any other reading, I buy printed books.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I don't like paper books anymore. I stopped getting them because I found I wouldn't open them because I hate them. Kindle app on my phone is the only way I read books now. I have trees where my books used to be.

That's really scary.
 

mrsmig

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When my husband and I were house-shopping (gosh, it's been nearly 20 years ago), a major selling point of the home we bought was a finished basement with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall built-in bookshelves.

And yes, they are full.

I go through them about once a year and pull books to donate to charity or to trade on Paperback Swap, an outfit I discovered years ago. You log books into the system, and if someone wants one you ship it to them via USPS Media Mail - usually for under $3. Once they receive it, you get a credit to use for a book you want. Other than the shipping, it's free (and yes, they take hardback, too). There are literally millions of books in the system (a lot of popular releases, mass market paperbacks and schoolbooks, but I've found some gems as well).

In addition, PBS runs school donation programs wherein you donate credits which the schoolkids then use to get books they want. I recommend them highly.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Here's my philosophy on old and unwanted books: What I cannot sell or give away I throw away.

:rolleyes:

You should never throw books away. You can always give them away in a heartbeat, and people all over the world need them. If nothing else, donate tehm to the nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army where they will help employ, feed, cloth, educate, entertain the poor and the homeless.

There are also poor countries all around the world who would give anything for your used books, regardless of the language difference. If you could see the way people from age three to eighty-three act in many parts of Africa act when they see a load of books coming in, you'd never again throw away a book.

When I "throw away" books, they get tossed only because I don't want credit for giving them to those who will take them to people who want books more than shoes. But you can, if you wish, take a tax credit from almost anyplace, including Goodwill and The Salvation Army.
 

Brightdreamer

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Here's my philosophy on old and unwanted books: What I cannot sell or give away I throw away.

I hope you at least recycle them... the landfills are too full of recyclable material already.

Nothing is more useless than an old comic book.

Depends on the comic book - some of them go for quite a chunk of change.

I have a Kindle, but I bought it only for downloading books I have been asked to review. For any other reading, I buy printed books.

You know there's a free Kindle app for your PC that lets you read Kindle books. (There's also a free Nook app.) If you dislike the thing that much, sell it and get some money back... for books.

No, what's scary is how I noticed that I'd read too many ebooks:

I was reading a dead-tree book, and when it came time to turn the page -- I reached for the mouse!! :Headbang:

I've done the try-to-swipe thing once or twice, myself... usually late at night, after reading on my Nook before picking up a real book.
 

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I have 14 bookcases throughout the house that were bursting at the seams. Then I saw a picture of a reading nook on Facebook and turned the walk-in closet it in my office into one.

It holds 90% of my science fiction/fantasy collection - both hardback and paperback. Now I'm slowly redistributing the other books more evening around the house.

So far I've managed to cull three small boxes from the herd, but they're still sitting stacked up in my office, just in case I change my mind. :D
 

Reziac

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Another outlet for unwanted books -- occasionally local stores keep an exchange shelf in their foyer. Bring what you want, take what you want.

Libraries sometimes have a similar program. Long ago at my local library, I traded a vast collection of mundane fiction (when you live in an Air Force town, every dumpster is full of paperbacks) for an equal volume of someone else's unwanted SF/F. :D
 

williemeikle

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How often do you clean out your library? I aways feel a need to hold onto books, but I honestly don't have space. There have been a few time where I have loaned books to friends and never gotten them back. So, what do I do? Buy the book again because I think I need it in my collection. Ridiculous, I know. I have boxes of books in the garage that were never unpacked after my last move. That was years ago, and I don't even know what's out there.

I have turned to kindle for space saving reasons and the convince of having so many books only a click away. But I still like to read actual books. And it's not only books. My stash of literary journals is now getting out of control. I hate the idea of getting rid of any of those, and I have reread journals. Still, I don't know if it is enough to justify keeping all of them. Especially because more keep coming.

I imagine many of you have had to battle a growing book collection. How do you handle this when you know you already have too many books?

My collection grew and grew from 1968 all the way up to 2007 - then we emigrated from the UK to Canada. I got a quote for bringing the books over that was about the same as the cost of our new house, so we dumped 90% of our library - a lot in the charity shop, some of the more expensive ones at a local auction house. All of the paperbacks went, and we only kept favorite hardcovers or those we -really- couldn't bear to part with.

Of course, since we got here, the collection is growing apace again...
 

DancingMaenid

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Libraries sometimes have a similar program. Long ago at my local library, I traded a vast collection of mundane fiction (when you live in an Air Force town, every dumpster is full of paperbacks) for an equal volume of someone else's unwanted SF/F. :D

My library sometimes sells used books that are donated, I think. They also sometimes give them away, which is kind of nice. I donated a couple bags of books to them a while back, and not long afterward, I went back to the library to return some books I'd checked out and discovered some carts outside the door filled with free books. As I was browsing, I discovered a book that I used to have. It was a little surreal to realize that it was my old book.
 

Once!

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I have found six solutions, of varying degrees of effectiveness:

A wife who occasionally has a clear-out for charity shops and church fund-raisers.

A son who is starting to get interested in classic science fiction, and is gradually transferring books from my shelves onto his.

More bookshelves.

Friends who borrow books but then don't return them.

Cardboard boxes in the loft.

A kindle.

Not sure I could pick a favourite. The kindle is the simplest solution, but the wife gives better hugs.
 

Reziac

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My library sometimes sells used books that are donated, I think. They also sometimes give them away, which is kind of nice. I donated a couple bags of books to them a while back, and not long afterward, I went back to the library to return some books I'd checked out and discovered some carts outside the door filled with free books.

Yep, I've seen that before too.

My university library (which is a big honkin' four-story outfit) sometimes gives away HUGE piles of 'outdated' texts (their notion of 'outdated' starts around 1940). This is an evil practice which has done unfortunate things to my bookshelves. :tongue

As I was browsing, I discovered a book that I used to have. It was a little surreal to realize that it was my old book.

Wow, that is surreal. Did it go home with you again??
 

Lissibith

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I've been trying to move more to my Nook solely for space reasons, so the bulk of the shelf space in my apartment now is taken up with comic book trades (and manga, but that's only because my father hand-made me a specially sized shelf just for my manga collection and drove it seven hours to give it to me, and it feels like a disservice not to use it for that purpose)

I know they're doing better with the technology lately, but I just cannot read comic books on my nook. The text is too small if you try to look at a whole page at once, and the panel-by-panel tech craps out every 20 pages or so in my experience (I was told by tech support that I read too fast for it to keep up, which is nonsense).

When it comes to novels, I keep a box and when I buy a hard copy and read it, I generally ask myself "Do I like this better than something on my shelves?" If the answer is yes, it gets shelved and bumps the other book out. If no, then the new book goes into the donation box. One in, one out.

Luckily we have both a local church and the library system that will accept donated books. I try to alternate.
 

Xelebes

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You should never throw books away. You can always give them away in a heartbeat, and people all over the world need them. If nothing else, donate tehm to the nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army where they will help employ, feed, cloth, educate, entertain the poor and the homeless.

Which is to say that he has tried all that. There are some books you simply cannot move. Perhaps they are printed in such ubiquitous quantities, perhaps they have truly outmoded, frivolous, and/or ubiquitous information, and perhaps the book is simply in deplorable condition. There is plenty of reasons to throw away a book.
 

Lhowling

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I try and keep all of my books; but it can be hard since I tend to move around a lot. And I have a horrible habit of borrowing books with no intention of returning them. So I end up acquiring more than I should. The last time I moved, I kept a few books behind since my roommates still remained in the apartment for another month or two. Now most of my books are in piles around my mom's house, or in boxes on the front porch, some covered in crunchy snow.

In an embarrassing way I learned never to borrow from a library, because they have a habit of holding me accountable when they lend me books. Touche, library. I owed them a stupid amount of money because I took out a stupid amount of books. Now I've learned to buy one at a time on Amazon and read whatever I need to at the library.
 

K. Q. Watson

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Which is to say that he has tried all that. There are some books you simply cannot move. Perhaps they are printed in such ubiquitous quantities, perhaps they have truly outmoded, frivolous, and/or ubiquitous information, and perhaps the book is simply in deplorable condition. There is plenty of reasons to throw away a book.

I have a copy of Helter Skelter with pages missing and the cover torn off, and it's from the 70's. Pretty sure the only thing to do with that baby is to toss it in recycling.

I know they're doing better with the technology lately, but I just cannot read comic books on my nook. The text is too small if you try to look at a whole page at once, and the panel-by-panel tech craps out every 20 pages or so in my experience (I was told by tech support that I read too fast for it to keep up, which is nonsense).
Have you tried a comic reader on your computer? I like ComicRack myself.
 

Lissibith

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Have you tried a comic reader on your computer? I like ComicRack myself.
I don't really like reading on the computer. Comes of having a severely uncomfortable computer chair and a couple wonderfully plush areas in the apartment I set up specifically for reading :) But if the space crunch gets much worse I may have to. I'm about to have to start the one-in-one-out with them too :(
 

nighttimer

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You should never throw books away. You can always give them away in a heartbeat, and people all over the world need them. If nothing else, donate tehm to the nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army where they will help employ, feed, cloth, educate, entertain the poor and the homeless.

There are also poor countries all around the world who would give anything for your used books, regardless of the language difference. If you could see the way people from age three to eighty-three act in many parts of Africa act when they see a load of books coming in, you'd never again throw away a book.

When I "throw away" books, they get tossed only because I don't want credit for giving them to those who will take them to people who want books more than shoes. But you can, if you wish, take a tax credit from almost anyplace, including Goodwill and The Salvation Army.

Does this apply to my collection of Power Man and Iron Fist comic books? :Huh:
 
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