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News from the book cull
Jul. 22nd, 2011 05:47 pmContinued culling books, despite the fact that it is OMG hot here in the part of New York, and I was dripping sweat over everything.
Periodically I find myself doubting this entire exercise, wondering why I'm bothering to purge perfectly good books. Then I do the math.
Years ago (before I took up writing), I read at a pace of books per week. Now it's more like weeks per book. For the last decade I've had a goal to read 52 books a year, but most years I fall far short of that. With the exception of a few, rare, sentimental favorites, the only reason to keep books is if I intend to reread them. Culling my collection down to a mere thousand books isn't a hardship-- at the pace of a book a week, that's twenty years of reading material. Without buying or reading a single new book.
So, yes, it's time to set the books free to find good homes. It's not that they are bad books (well honestly some are, but most were read and enjoyed.) It's that given the choice between something new and rereading them, I'm going to pick something new every time.
And when I'm done, I'll no longer need to store part of my collection in the basement, which means that next time there's flooding in the forecast I can sleep easier.
Periodically I find myself doubting this entire exercise, wondering why I'm bothering to purge perfectly good books. Then I do the math.
Years ago (before I took up writing), I read at a pace of books per week. Now it's more like weeks per book. For the last decade I've had a goal to read 52 books a year, but most years I fall far short of that. With the exception of a few, rare, sentimental favorites, the only reason to keep books is if I intend to reread them. Culling my collection down to a mere thousand books isn't a hardship-- at the pace of a book a week, that's twenty years of reading material. Without buying or reading a single new book.
So, yes, it's time to set the books free to find good homes. It's not that they are bad books (well honestly some are, but most were read and enjoyed.) It's that given the choice between something new and rereading them, I'm going to pick something new every time.
And when I'm done, I'll no longer need to store part of my collection in the basement, which means that next time there's flooding in the forecast I can sleep easier.