I grew up in a house full of books. My mom loves books; actually everyone in my family loves books. I have quite a lot of books and find that I have a lot of trouble getting rid of them even if I know I will never read them.
I was trying to clean up my office the other day and was really frustrated that our ONE book shelf no longer holds all the books we own. We have books from our college days, even from our home school days. I have books from my great grandparents estate. Some of the books are novels that I've been given or bought myself. A few of the books are references that we use all the time. But mostly, the books sit and collect dust.
As I struggled to fit all the books in a orderly fashion into the book case, I wondered why I keep them all. Am I really going to read, "The Body" again? I suffered through it when it was required reading for a class, I doubt I will crack the cover open again. I have a few more important things to do first.
I found one book that I remember being in my mom's collection. I asked her about it once and she said she never finished it because it was so poorly written. She said, "It sure is a nice looking book though." I agree that books are beautiful, but should they serve a greater purpose?
Check out the poll on how many books you own? I am also curious what you do with all your books. Do you ever get rid of them?
13 comments:
I voted for 200+ counting kids books =) the only books we've ever gotten rid of is John's libral OSU textbooks. But we didn't get rid of them we sold them online or traded them for credits towards the next semester's books. My old arobics instructer owns the used book store in Independence, if you are looking to slim you book selection, I would suggest taking them there, because they will give you credit towards new (used) books.
NO! I do not get rid of books.
I use Frugal Reader. It's online. You get credits for listing books. The only money you pay is when someone asks for one of yours, you pay shipping. Then you use your credits to receive other books...really it is just trading...not sure that it really helps with the whole space issue, but it is nice to get other books without paying much money! I like the used bookstore, but everytime I go in I come out with a pile, rather than the one that I went in after.
Oh, do those books bring back some memories. Sitting in the dorm room or library with highlighter poised and ready to highlight! :) We've kept all our textbooks which has come in handy for Linds with his job. I have also used mine a few times through the years for Bible studies I led or questions I've had. I don't crack them as much as I should though. Right now I am trying to commit to reading all the books that Linds has to read for his seminary classes. This is going to be a bigger task that I thought at first. I forget that my brain is now very mushy compared to the college years. I'm a sucker for books so I really have trouble letting them go. Not sure what to tell you.
(Laughter!) Try moving all those books you 'love' into boxes and a moving van and then unloading them. You'll no longer 'love' them!! To be honest, Dan has a few theological books he never reads but can't imagine giving away, so they follow us from house to house;-) We won't talk about my books!
We have more books then you can shake a stick at. Seriously. We have three entire bookshelves filled and more books in the bedroom. My husband is a firm believer in never getting rid of a book once he has acquired it. I was a little better about selling back the college books I had no use for and only kept the ones from my major. For the first five years of our marriage my husband insisted that we keep our books segregated for some odd reason. I finally managed to talk him into combining our books and putting them on the shelves in order of subject matter (which segregates them for the most part anyways!) when we got our new bookcases.
We have tons of books. Literally, probably only about one ton. (ditto Dan & Hillary about moving them!) I usually get novels from the library rather than buy them, but Brian makes notes in his, so he really likes to own his own books.
Yes, we get rid of them. We sell them online or at used bookstores or give them to Goodwill or leave them on the street (not really).
But still, our bookshelves manage to be crowded. Some day, when we own our own home, we hope to have one extra room to make into a library.
What do we do with all of our books? is the other thing you asked. Some of them we read. Some of them we read. Some of them we have for reference. Some we just happily surround ourselves with as memories of a good time past.
This is really interesting! I just counted the books in our bedroom bookshelf and got 50ish. There are a few more out front but not many. The kids have quite a few, but I didn't include those. I am a bit of a sucker for kids books, but not much of a book horder myself. I LOVE books/reading. But I really only buy books I can't get from the library or ones that are my MOST favorite. I am that way with lots of things, though, like clothes and kitchen stuff. I'm always purging ans simplifying. Craig has more clothes than I do!
We have tons of books. Both my husband and I love books. We have two half-size bookshelves in our bedroom, one double full-size bookshelf and one half-size book shelf in the study, and one double full-size bookshelf in the livingroom....and about a dozen boxes of books in the garage (about half catalogued and organized and the other half still not unpacked from our return from college in PA). We've organized our bookshelves into categories with labels (Commentaries, Christology, Hermeneutics, Marriage, Home Improvement, Politics, etc), but it's still hard to keep them all straight. The only ones I get rid of are my Christian fiction books (fiction books only get one half-size bookshelf). Many of the others we've never read, but they're great for reference and hopefully someday we'll have the chance to read more of them. As one of your other commenters stated, we too hope to have a room designated as a library one day!
Jeff here
Dess told me I should comment on this one. I worked in a library while in college, when ever someone would donate i would get first pick of the non-library-able books.
I haven't read all of them (there is only so much chaldean lexicon you can read!) But I have read quite a bit of them. I have books on eco-terrorism (actually a good read) to Computer programming to John Wesley's biography (1887 ed).
In order to get a new book I must take two to the book store now...so that keeps our numbers down...and the public library busy.
So I was watching Oprah yesterday (what, me? Watching day time television?) and there is this new thing that looks like a book and you open it and it is a computer that you use to download and read books. Like 4,000 books. Crazy. On a computer. I'm all for eliminating paper...but I don't know if I can give up actual books.
The wierdest thing to me was that you can download music to play on it so it is in the background while you are reading. Wierd.
What is this world coming to???
Right now on the shelf over my desk I can count over 75 books. Add that to the roughly 5000 other books we have in the house and I can truthfully say, "We have books," and the number just keeps growing.
I don't have a clue how many books we have but getting rid of them is painful! You know how many book shelves we have but did you know I also have drawers in my night stand full, and boxes under the bed in the guest room. I like the idea of online selling or trading though. But really you should consider another bookshelf!
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