(Just found your blog recently and I’m finding it so helpful and inspiring!)

Many older books are available in e-form free. In general the books are cheaper than buying a new paper one. Sometimes the older books are cheaper than buying used. Again, not perfect–you cannot resell or give away due to the DRM–but I like this option for light reading like mysteries; I will read them again but I don’t want those 8 million paperbacks cluttering up my shelves. So over time I will slowly transition that type of reading over to the Kindle.

In my new life, I firmly apply the ‘rules’ set out in this article–create boundaries and don’t keep anything that you can find in a library or online or just to impress people.

I wrote an ebook about my decluttering journey and how I dealt with books takes up most of a chapter.

There’s a major challenge with this. Libraries Also have a limited amount of shelf space. The book you want may not be available. In fact I’d say the last several hundred books I’ve added to my library have been via the $5/grocery bag sales at local libraries, Hollister and Santa Clara, CA.

Bob Durtschi

But, the fact that if you need to look up a passage in The Scarlet Letter at 11PM, you can find it online and if you need a paper copy you can buy it again for a few bucks (or maybe 50 cents at a used bookstore) means that there really isn’t a need to keep your dogeared copy from high school or college unless you have some really good notes scribbled in the margins or something.

One exception to this is for those of you who are parents: look ahead in your kid’s next few years of required reading (most schools have their required reading lists online) and don’t throw away classics that are on the reading list. Inevitably your kid will remember they are supposed to be reading it and you’ll have to make a special trip to buy it or they will leave their copy in their locker on the night before a test.

One of our friends (knowing that I had a big library) called me at 10:30PM once to see if I had a copy of Hamilton’s Mythology because a report or project crept up on their son. I did.

rhett

I see that you say, “Get rid of any book you’ve read, don’t plan on reading or referencing again, is in the public domain, and can be found in its entirety online. That’s right, I’m talking about ditching your Dover copy of The Scarlet Letter.”

I do agree on the idea of getting rid of a lot of books. But I disagree that the online public-domain option is any good. For many purposes, it probably is; but for many other purposes, it simply is not. For several reasons.

Reason 1. The online edition might not be a decent edition. There’s usually no telling which of many versions of a text gets into print (there are HUGE discrepancies among the various versions of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” from within his lifetime, for instance; imagine what happens AFTER he’s dead!), and so a typical edition in paper-print will TELL you what’s there and what isn’t and who made the decision. An online edition generally doesn’t have that apparatus with it. So, you might read Shakespeare’s Sonnets and discover that you ended up reading the one edited by the homophobic who believed Will was actually Raleigh, and yet you’d never know. It’s risky to accept editing from a silent editor.

2. Online is a pain in the butt. I don’t LIKE reading on-line. You waste paper by printing it back out again, which is both environmentally unfriendly, and counter to the purpose of reducing. Many things which you think are accessible on-line are actually just PRINT-able FROM on-line. Keep in mind which of the two you’re likely to perform in the future, when you consider whether or not to get rid of your non-on-line copy.

Anyway, aside from those caveats, I approve of the idea of recycling books. Other readers can enjoy them just as well. I try to buy nearly all my books used (here’s how: use the ISBN and Google, or use BookFinder.com). The words don’t tend to fade out through excess eye grindage …