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A room without books is like a body without a soul.
--Cicero
That said, I did my 'final move' 14 years ago. I figure I had about 1200 books at the time, mostly non-fiction.
I sold the expensive ones online, sold the old ones to an antiquarian books dealer, sold the paperbacks to a used book store, and donated the rest to the library book sale where I used to volunteer.
I took maybe two dozen books with me, mostly sentimental. I found that if I wanted to read an old favorite, I could get it from the library or Project Gutenberg (I love my kindle), or buy it online in paper or electronic formats.
13 years later, it turned out that wasn't my final home, and I disposed of most of what I had accumulated. I kept even fewer books this time, and not the same ones.
My husband and I have taken our collection down to sentimental items only, like the Tolkien paperbacks he bought with his allowance when he was 9.
Quote:
Originally Posted by biscuitmom
Speaking as a retired librarian and as an unrepentant lover of all things literary: no one gives a crap about dusty old books.
It's all about content, not format. If you toss out a dozen musty editions of Jane Austen novels, that doesn't mean her works will be forgotten or ignored or abandoned. Get over it.
This! I used to work as a library assistant. So many people would get offended that we didn't drool over their musty box of books they'd had in storage for a couple of decades. If it's junk to you, it's more than likely junk to the library. And encyclopedias are always junk.
One school library I worked at did an awesome weed one summer. Well, the kerfuffle when a parent saw the boxes in the dumpster! You've have thought we slaughtered puppies. Nope, we got rid of damaged books, outdated books (one stated that one day man may even land on the moon!), and random stuff that cluttered the shelves and made it hard for kids to browse through to find ones they liked.
Books are the ideas, the stories. Not the paper and fabric. Oddly enough, it was working in libraries that made me less sensitive about individual books and gain this opinion. Which many people in my life thought was odd, they thought I'd be super protective about books. Nope, they're replaceable and it's not the end of the world if a kid spills something on one, or a dog eats it (not that I ever had a dog that ate a couple of library books. Ahem. lol Both new hardcovers. Ouch - the replacement costs were high!). Now I mostly take library books out electronically.
One reason I hold on to old favorites, is for when I'm sick in bed! I swear, one book saved my life! I had the flu, then bronchitis, and felt like hell! All I could do was lay in bed and read when I wasn't sleeping or feverish. My sister had given me Azazel by Isaac Asimov for Christmas one year, and as I lay there feeling next to death, those stories made me laugh and gave me the strength go go on living! Well, the Zpak probably helped....maybe not a great reason to hold onto old favorites, but being sick is the one time I had time (I was still working full-time and commuting) to re-read all my old favorites. I really think I, and probably others, will read our favorites again. As long as our eyes and minds hold out!
What criteria did you use when deciding which books to take with you to you moved to your retirement home, or when you decided that it was time to seriously 'downsize' and/or get rid of excess "stuff"? And are you happy with your decision?
What I have done up to now is to "collect" books for a while and then, about every three years or so, I donate the ones I know I won't read again, but now I am hesitating about the 50 or so books that I haven't read in at least ten years, but that I enjoyed very much the last time I read them. (Most of these I have read at least three times.) My husband has about the same number of books I do, plus we have also collected about 50 or so cookbooks that we now very seldom use, thanks to the Internet. plus we also have a set of encyclopedias published in the early 80's that I think might come in useful if the Internet ever goes down for a long time, so we are looking at possibly moving about 200 books altogether. This is a long distance move, so I don't want to take any books that we probably will never read again.
(But, please, no suggestions about E-books, Kindles, etc. I know that many people love them, and they definitely save space, but I hate them and would never consider buying one for myself. To emphasize, I know they are GREAT for some people, but not for me.)
Thanks in advance!
P.S. I am putting this in the Retirement forum rather than the General Moving forum because 20 years ago, I would have taken all my books without even thinking about it. But now, as a senior, I don't want to have any more "stuff" than I actually want or need.
Oh man, I understand the Kindle hate. I don't like my Kindle near as much as real books. I enjoy the convenience when traveling though and purchase books on it that would be much more expensive than on paper. As for choosing real books, I consider the genre I prefer and the author. If the author someone I really like? Are they well regarded in their field? Would it cost me a lot of $$$ to replace the book if I got rid of it? Is it one of those thrillers in which knowing the ending ruins a reread? Is it a book that thinking about ditching it makes my mind go, "Wait a minute, I'm not sure about that." If so, it stays.
I moved and got rid of a lot of books, including cookbooks.
Oh I was very disappointed in myself, as I missed them terribly....even bought replacements from used book stores!! Including many cookbooks....
This happened to me, too, with cookbooks.
I moved in 1999 and got rid of around a thousand books. I left them in a public area in the co-op where I lived, and they were gone in a couple of days. When I moved, I didn't really miss anything except some of the cookbooks, and I ended up rebuying some of them. I had kept most, but ended up wishing I had kept more, including Fannie Farmer, two NYT books, les Freres Troisgros, Richard Olney.
I am not a re-reader, so I did not, and do not, miss most of the fiction I amassed over the years (the great majority of my books were novels). In a later cull, I donated another couple of hundred novels to an organization that mails books to prisoners. You may have one in your state. It's done locally, as I understand it, due to the cost of postage.
I resisted Kindle even after a friend bought me one for Christmas in 2011. How on earth am I to put a Kindle book in its place on a shelf after I finish reading it? But being able to embiggen the font size won out eventually. The tiny type in which most books are printed just won't cut it any longer, and I now think of the Kindle as one of the great products of our age. And I'm a guy for whom books and bookshelves were decorating.
I still keep art books and cookbooks and some reference books.
I don't know what the OP should do. S/he doesn't seem to want to let go.
I also got rid of hundreds of books during my last move.
I had a bit of a method.
1) I used to read a lot of political books back in the GWB years. No one cares today about some partisan book from ten years ago. Unless I particularly thought it was worth keeping, probably 90% of these types of books were just recycled.
2) Any kind of "reference" book was recycled. My grandparents gave me a collection of Compton's encyclopedia from 1973. Those were all gone.
3) Any kind of cheap paperback was gone.
I basically kept only more expensive, nonfiction material that I can't easily replace, certain things I collect, and a few things that were sentimental.
What criteria did you use when deciding which books to take with you to you moved to your retirement home, or when you decided that it was time to seriously 'downsize' and/or get rid of excess "stuff"? And are you happy with your decision?
What I have done up to now is to "collect" books for a while and then, about every three years or so, I donate the ones I know I won't read again, but now I am hesitating about the 50 or so books that I haven't read in at least ten years, but that I enjoyed very much the last time I read them. (Most of these I have read at least three times.) My husband has about the same number of books I do, plus we have also collected about 50 or so cookbooks that we now very seldom use, thanks to the Internet. plus we also have a set of encyclopedias published in the early 80's that I think might come in useful if the Internet ever goes down for a long time, so we are looking at possibly moving about 200 books altogether. This is a long distance move, so I don't want to take any books that we probably will never read again.
(But, please, no suggestions about E-books, Kindles, etc. I know that many people love them, and they definitely save space, but I hate them and would never consider buying one for myself. To emphasize, I know they are GREAT for some people, but not for me.)
Thanks in advance!
P.S. I am putting this in the Retirement forum rather than the General Moving forum because 20 years ago, I would have taken all my books without even thinking about it. But now, as a senior, I don't want to have any more "stuff" than I actually want or need.
.
When I downsized like you are doing I kept non-fiction and classic novels hard covers like Dickens, Hardy, Austin, Tolstoy, Bronte, Shelley, Frost, and so on.
Take into consideration the size of your new seniors' quarters. Will it accommodate a small bookcase say 3 ft wide and 4 or 6 shelves for example?
Reduce number of books to what will fit into that.
Consider the present day value of each book.
- discard/donate paperbacks you have already read
- keep hard cover classics
- discard Reader's Digest Abridged hardcover books
- call your local library and ask what books they will take
- 2nd hand book stores might pay you something for books you take there
Although I have a masters in English, at this time in my life I don't see the point of keeping a huge stash of used books.
Fiction - if I've read it once, I already know how it ends. Not interested in reading it again. Same with DVDs. I don't get how people can watch the same movie(s) over and over again. Short-term memory issues? LOL
Nonfiction - the local public library and the internet are all the informational resources I need.
I do have about 10 cookbooks that I browse through occasionally when I'm in that mood, but I am admittedly not much of a cook so could probably part with them fairly easily.
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
--Cicero
That said, I did my 'final move' 14 years ago. I figure I had about 1200 books at the time, mostly non-fiction.
I sold the expensive ones online, sold the old ones to an antiquarian books dealer, sold the paperbacks to a used book store, and donated the rest to the library book sale where I used to volunteer.
I took maybe two dozen books with me, mostly sentimental. I found that if I wanted to read an old favorite, I could get it from the library or Project Gutenberg (I love my kindle), or buy it online in paper or electronic formats.
13 years later, it turned out that wasn't my final home, and I disposed of most of what I had accumulated. I kept even fewer books this time, and not the same ones.
Interesting statement but a house FULL of books sounds like a huge crowd to me. I like people and books but not hoards. The universe is full of our used stuff including books.
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