What to do When You Can't Read? Purge Your Book Piles!
I've been sick this week. I've also been swamped with work and school projects. I'm also STILL not reading. (*weeps*) I have three books on their way to me that I am really anxious for, and had any of them arrived before the weekend, I'd have been reading all weekend I am sure. Alas, they didn't make it and will probably show up Monday when I am back at work and in the middle of a new school project. Curses! Meanwhile I was super out of sorts today and so I thought, why not purge my books like I have been meaning to do since JUNE.
Then I discovered we were out of boxes. One quick trip to the office supply store later, I was upstairs in the guest room sorting out books I wanted to keep, books I wanted to re-home and from those regular books vs. ARCs. Two of the 5 boxes pictured above are filled with nothing but ARCs. Those are tricky to get rid of. I can't sell them. I can't give them to the library (besides, the libraries around here don't even want my shiny, new English books. No way they'd want ARCs.) I'm at 5 boxes of books from just one room and a total of 134 books so far. I have yet to tackle the basement. This room only holds YA and MG books. And I only have one bookshelf, so the rest are in the closet. Or were in piles randomly strewn about the house.
I still have to get into the basement and go through those books. The basement holds all of our Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Mystery and Fiction books. It also holds all the random books we have collected - non-fiction, art books, faerie art books, faerie puzzles, faerie collections, faerie..well, you get the idea I'm sure. The last time I went through all of my books and gave a bunch to the local church bazaar, I was a lot more emotionally attached to the books. It took about two years for that feeling to change. When it came to the YA/MG books I was purging, I was semi-ruthless. I kept all of the books I really, truly loved reading. The others went into boxes. Some I started to put in boxes and then changed my mind at the last second. Some I thought I might see if my sister wanted for her kids. Some books I'm just not ready to part with yet.
I'm sort of an odd duck and while I still feel connected to something, I can't get rid of it. The second that connection is gone, the item is out of my house. But until then... I need to keep it around. Thankfully I've been disconnecting from a lot of the clutter we have hanging around and we've done quite a few purges in the last 6 months. Our kitchen cupboards are more organized and less full (why did 2 people need about 30 mugs!?) and our living space is a little cleaner. It's hard to do but once I'm on a roll, I'm ready to de-clutter and make our space a happier one.
Not to mention, I only have about 3 book shelves. Two of those are "normal" sized. I only have one in the guest room where I have all the YA/MG books. Once I boxed up those 134 books, I started reorganizing my shelf. I managed to get authors A-N on that shelf in the photo. Go, me! (Only to realize I will have three new books arriving this week and I have about 6 or 7 lent out to friends. Drat!) A few of those books are unread, but most of the unread books I had lying around have been boxed up and ready to find new homes. That was a big one. If I'd had the book in the house for over 3 years and still hadn't read it? I pretty much tossed it in the box. The odd time I didn't even remember I had the book and so I kept it because I remembered that I had really wanted to read it. I give those books another year. If I have not read them by the end of summer next year? A-re-homing they go!
Young Adult and Middle Grade authors O-Z are back in the closet. But I have a lot fewer books in the closet now than I did. So, yay, me! I realized as I was alphabetizing my books that I still wanted to get the newly released editions of Harry Potter from this year. Then I'll have two copies of each book. But that's ok. Eventually I want a room that is ONLY library and I will have a space for fancy boxed sets of books. That's my dream. Those books are like collectors things to me and I still have connections to them! AND I will reread them. Books I like to re-read, I keep.
All those books I couldn't finish and kept thinking, "Maybe it'll be better if I try it this time?" or that I just haven't read. Or that I read and really didn't like, so why was I holding on to the series and getting more? Those are all boxed up. I will see if friends with kids want them and if not, I'll be passing most of them on to the church bazaar again this year. The ARCs? Well, I'll probably recycle what I can't re-home. And I am not shipping anything to anyone because I have no money (or patience!) for that.
Bonus to purging the books today? I found all of my bookmarks!
I couldn't understand where they all went! I used to have bookmarks all over the house and lately I'm just using scraps of paper because I can't find any of them! Turns out they were mostly all in books I hadn't finished. Or that I had finished and forgot to take them out of. Oops. But now I have real actual bookmarks to use in the books I will HOPEFULLY be reading soon. (I haven't read a book since the middle of August! OMG!)