News from the book cull

[pbray]

Continued 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.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Last night, I had to move stuff near the path of the window well leakage when I readied for the junkmen. Given that we hadn't had much rain to speak of in the last couple of weeks and that only scattered t-storms were expected overnight, I didn't think I took much risk.

Of course, t-storms passed through last night and rain fell well into the morning. Minor flooding. One box got wet. The funny thing was that the water flowed in a manner that it never had, veering toward the boxes instead of taking its regular path.

You could try telling me that It didn't do so on purpose, but I'm afraid you wouldn't have much luck.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It's a corollary to the rule that houses know when you have money... water knows when there's something to wreck and will make a beeline for it.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

I recently did a cull. Some for possible sale, some for the Hope Lodge library.