Booking through weeding

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain?

Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all? (This would have described me for most of my life, by the way.)

And–when you DO weed out books from your collection (assuming that you do) …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore? SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

For personal reasons we had to move house in April 2008. Before that I owned 4000+ books. That is a lot of books and I had to pared it down drastically. There were some I was never going to read, and some I had forgotten I owned and so on. Some were in such a bad shape that restoration was impossible.

I sorted throught it and made different piles:

1) to give out to Old Age Homes

2) to give out to orphanages

3) to give out to the local library (mostly bestsellers)

4) to give out to friends and family

5) to try to restore

6) to get out those which can't be restored

In two months, my book pile was reduced to 2500+ books. It still is somewhere around that number. I have kept it that way by continually giving out books. I have never sold anything. Swapped yes. Or I simply give away books to whomsover asks for it. And I do occasionally take out books to Old Age Homes and Orphanages. I need to reduce it too 1500 books and I will do that.

Yes, I do keep those books that I mean to re-read or those I can't part with. Like poetry books. Classics. Physics books.