The Tender Subject of Books

These are my books before I went through them.Do you really need your books?

I realize this blog post is going to hit close to home for a lot of people, my own mother included. I?m going to examine books. Why do we keep them? Do you really need all your books? Look at a shelf of your books.   When was the last time you used each book? See, I told you, this is going to be an uncomfortable post.

There is a safety and security in books. They represent knowledge, information and inspiration. They are characters and stories. There is a lot of potential in a book. However, books are only these things *if* they are being read. They only have value when they are read. All the time they have been sitting on a shelf they might as well have been rocks.

In my journey to reduce what I own by one third I have done a lot of reading about others who have chosen to reduce what they own. The post: Breaking the Sentimental Attachment to Books from Becoming Minimalist gave me a good step by step method for thinning down my book collection to just the ?Desert Island? books.

My bookshelf after the first pass.I did have to go through the shelves twice.  The first time I just took out the books I didn?t really want, but had been given or acquired somewhere along the way. The second time I was able to accept that I don?t need all my books. It was this post from Mnmlist: Minimalist Books in which a former bibliophile creates the simple rule: If I don?t plan on reading it in the next six months, it?s out.  I used this rule when I went through my books. It was hard to be honest with myself and not make excuses for keeping some of them. 

Then I was faced with what to do with these books. I could donate them to Goodwill, but are there better options.

I could also:

1. Donate to libraries
2. Give them to a friend who will enjoy them
3. Sell to a second hand book store or on a website like Amazon. All of these options set the books free, back out into the world where they can be useful and enjoyed by others. ?
These are the books that are left.  Less than half of what I started with.?What will happen to the rest of my books? I plan on donating the plant books to the arboretum?s library; the randoms are going to Goodwill; and a small selection I plan to send to Peace Corps Panama?s Lending Library.
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