Comments on: Taming Book Clutter

By: Cook everything in one recipe book « Sherdie

Cook everything in one recipe book « Sherdie — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:20:59 +0000

[...] have. It broke my heart, but with all the other options it’s hard to justify the space books can take up. Necessity is a cold hard bitch at times and things like bookcrossing made it more bearable. But [...]

By: Laura

Laura — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 01:54:07 +0000

At Bookmooch.com you can list your unwanted books, send them to others who want them, and then request those you want with the points you earn. Works much better for most books than trying to sell them online, as the dropshippers and penny sellers have pretty much saturated that market.

Worldcatlibraries.org will tell you what the closest library is for any book you are looking for.

By: Sonja

Sonja — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:50:54 +0000

stop buying books? that’s insane.

By: Kitty

Kitty — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:14:46 +0000

@st–Ohhh, sobbing at the thought of hacksawing books apart!

I’m trying to work up the nerve to pare down the 13 bookcases in my house. I, too, have signed copies (from people I know, mostly history), long out-of-print volumes, books from my childhood (and my mother’s childhood), and they’re like old friends. And I reread almost all of them.

Paperbacks, bestsellers, etc, go out as soon as I’m done with them. I’m the president of our local Friends of the Library, which helps, since I see firsthand both how much pleasure the donated books bring others (I’ve seen one of my old, distinctive books sold at least six times and then redonated), and the good that the money we make for our library can do. Even though our library isn’t huge, they’ve always managed to get what I want either through our system or interlibrary loan, too. But yes, as a writer, I also understand the worry about writers earning less when fewer books are sold. For me, though, digital will never replace the multi-sensory experience of a new book.

By: sarah

sarah — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:38:37 +0000

I definitely also recommend paperback swap. it’s great!

By: Ellen

Ellen — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 06:26:29 +0000

“Over the years, I had acquired somewhere near 850 books…”

850 is a lot? I’ve been pruning my library for a year, in preparation for moving to a house half the size of my current one, and I’m down to a mere seven *thousand*. No sympathy

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:48:47 +0000

Excuse using my last name too, I thought that would be not included, but now you know me anyway.

By: Jennifer Logan

Jennifer Logan — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:46:02 +0000

Recycling books, at used book stores, get credit for the books you take in, and get buy books with those credits. Paperbacks are wanted for the prisons, no hard back, since weapons can be hidden in them. Some churches are collecting books for just this project.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:03:01 +0000

@st:

Since you scanned a hundred books through your scansnap, you must have come up with a nice assemplyline process for it. Care to share?

By: Dayna

Dayna — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 04:11:36 +0000

I love Paperback Swap. You can swap out your books for other people’s – hardbacks, paperbacks or audiobooks. They have over 1,000,000 to choose from. Great source for finding obscure titles and getting your books in the hands of those who will also love them.

By: st

st — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:55:14 +0000

I bought me a scansnap, and I scanned in over 100 of my books. Now I’m down to around 35 books, in one bookcase in my living room. The books that are my favorites, or ones that I couldn’t bear to destroy in order to feed them through the sheet-fed scanner. All the books are on my hard drive as PDFs. I catalog them in Delicious Library, and I can read them on my mac. Someday soon, when the tech gets just a little better, there will be a good, inexpensive handheld e-book reader, and it will display PDFs well. And I’ll be all set. It took a long time (I sawed off some bindings with a jigsaw, and sometimes I tore out pages one by one while watching TV), but it was worth being able to get rid of boxes of books from the closet, and to be able to switch from two 7-foot tall bookcases to one 4-foot tall folding bookcase. Very worth it.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:04:44 +0000

I just watched Farenheit 451 again. It made me feel guilty for hoarding so many books, many of which aren’t even accessible right now. Watching was a great way to be reminded that books are about the ideas and the people behind them, not just objects.

By: Zora

Zora — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:43:54 +0000

I have over 2000 books. Many are out of print; a fair number are rare or over 100 years old. I have shelves of specialized texts that I bought because the local university doesn’t even have them. When I can, I use free ebooks, my Questia account, or the library, but that isn’t always possible.

Scholars are different. Books aren’t clutter, they’re tools of the trade.

That said, you can replace many of the “classics” with free ebooks from Project Gutenberg or manybooks.net, which only take up space on a hard drive.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:19:13 +0000

Speaking of outdated technical books, last year I finally parted with my huge college computer science & Law books from the late 1980′s. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with books on outdated law and computer books with floppy discs! What did I ever think I was going to do with those floppies? Donate them to the museum of computer science? It felt wonderful to get rid of them!

By: Andrea

Andrea — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:40:03 +0000

My grandmother keeps a lid on her book clutter by using the local book swap. Its a used bookstore where you can get second discount by bringing in a book to replace the one you’re buying. So for every book she buys, she gets rid of a book.