I ordered 11 books off of half.com last week. I got them for a total of about $60 including shipping. That is probably the most I have spent in a single time on books in over a year. It is certainly the most books I have purchased at once in well over two years. They are either books I have heard on audio & want to read again or books I have checked out of the library often enough I decided to just buy them.
So they have started arriving the past few days and I went to put a few of them on my bookshelves. This proved more of a challenge that I expected.
A couple or so years ago I got rid of ALOT of books. HUNDREDS of books actually. Boxes and boxes of books went out of this house. About a hundred or so were listed on half.com or bookmooch.com. So many books left my house that, despite the evidence of my own eyes, I firmly believed I had gotten rid of most of my books and all I needed to do was reorganize what was left & there would be all this space on my bookshelves.
I am not exaggerating either, several hundred books have left my house. When you lug boxes and boxes of books out of your house it is natural to think “Gosh I have given away nearly all my books”
Unless you started with 1800 books and are in denial about that.
This is what is left. Books in the office
more books n the office
books in the living room
books in the bedroom
books in the kitchen 
Rough estimate is that there are 1000-1200 books still in the house (and those are just *my* books. I haven’t added DH or the boys’ books to that total)
So, um, yeah, I haven’t really gotten rid, proportionally, of that many books and it is clearly obvious there is little to no room on those shelves. But for the past year or more I have thought of myself as book deprived because I got rid of so many & have bought so few.
Even now I look at those shelves and think “but there can’t be *that* many books. this isn’t *that* many books” Probably because I am used to the shelves being double stacked & double packed. I mean really, just WHERE was I keeping all those books anyway?
So now I face the unpleasant task of once again purging the books and this time it will suck. Last time wasn’t too bad. I was able to go through them fairly easily & get rid of the ones I didn’t enjoy that much or was fairly sure I no longer needed, ones who’s thesis have since been disproven, the information outdated, ones on topics I am no longer interested in. 500-700 books fell into those categories.
Which means the ones left are the ones I like. I have read every book in my library at least twice, many I have read many times. Nothing on those shelves is superfluous or unnecessary. All of them are books I am likely to read again or want for information. Maybe 20 of them can go… some of the travel essay books & some of the romances. But 20 books doesn’t even make a dent. That’s not even a whole shelf.
I’m going to have to make some hard choices. There is no space for more bookshelves, every possible open bit of wall has a bookshelf on it, even the bathrooms, except the hallway and in the interest of letting people get to their bedrooms I can’t in good conscious put bookshelves there. Unless….Dh could make the inset kind in the wall cavity in the hallway. That would be really neat actually. But meantime, I have 2 little up and coming readers & I have to make some space for them. Their shelves are filling up and soon they will need more room.
I guess Sunday I will start the doleful task of deciding what stays & what goes. ::sniff::
6 comments:
I may have to show these photos to my husband- you've got me beat on books and yarn. Good luck sorting through... I had a tough time when I recently cleared out a couple dozen books. I love Half-Price Books. They buy and sell used, and the new books they sell are (duh) half the price marked on the cover.
Okay, you can obviously have a larger bookshelf in the bedroom and do you really need that lamp in the family room - looks like more room for a book shelf. That will tide you over until dh can build out those new hallway bookshelves :)
You are an amazing reader.
Wow, and I thought I had a lot of books. Of course moving to a place with no used book stores (or even new ones) has helped... lol. My place was covered with books back when I used to work in a used book store, now that was heaven! Good luck with the perging :-)
Holy Moly! You have your own personal library!
I think maybe, just maybe that you might like books, lol! What a wonderful hobby though. I mean really, it could be much worse - what if you were into lawn gnomes instead.
you have so many books!!!
i think you need to have a real library...
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