One of my New Year's Resolutions was to get rid of some stuff. I'm still working on converting all of my old CDs to mp3 and my DVDs to DivX/XviD, but one thing I haven't addressed in a long time is my growing book collection.
I like books. I like reading them and then hanging on to them, displaying them, and occasionally referring to them for reference. I've kept pretty much every book I've read since mid-high except for library books, and I've actually kept quite a few of those too. Now what sucks is, I have a couple of bookshelves in my house (one in my computer room and one upstairs), and I have my favorite books on those, but the rest of my books are out in the garage on shelves or in boxes.
Early last year I bought a Kindle, and I thought to myself, "This is great! I can finally get rid of some books!" But I didn't. I kept them all and quickly realized that the owning of the books was more important than the books.
When I discover something new these days, I'll spend a few days researching it. After watching Avatar I read about it on IMDB, Wikipedia, and several other sites. Back in the day you couldn't do that -- you read books, and so I have lots of books on the same topics. After going through the garage the other night I found half a dozen books about Charles Manson, half a dozen books about the JFK Assassination, almost two dozen UFO books, etc. Yes, I was a weird kid/young adult/adult.
Lots of the books I had out in the garage were the old classics I read in high school -- Siddhartha, Tarzan, all the Heinlein books, etc. Those were the first to go into the donation box; they're easily found online and I can get them on the Kindle, no problem. I also weeded out all the college books and old computer books. I seriously had "Upgrading to DOS 6.22 for Dummies" out there. The real dummy was me for keeping that book for so long.
I then had to decide what my lowest book price would be and I decided it was a dollar. One of the maddest I ever got was while having a garage sale. There's something about trying to sell my awesome stuff for a quarter and having old ladies try and talk me down to 15 cents that just plum pisses me off. (Worse: the Mexican families that don't speak English and just keep repeating, "$10 for all of dis? $10 for everyting?" With nightmares of that in my head, any book that I wouldn't pay a dollar for went into the donation box. I'm sorry, 500 Funny Limericks, but it's time to go.
Another thing that left? Reference books. I had a book called, "14,000 quotes for writers to use." I have that now, it's called Google. Also, the AP Style Guide. I don't need it anymore, but if I did, Google. Dictionaries, Movie Guides, old Guinness Books of World Records? Gone, gone, gone. All that stuff's online for free now. If I lose Internet access someday, I won't be sitting around reading reference material on dead trees ... I'll be busy figuring out a way to kill myself.
That left me with around 100 books that were then divided up into piles: horror, paranormal, UFO, true crime ... few others. Then I put those lists for sale on Craigslist at such crazy low prices that it would be impossible for them not to sell.
Really what I had to get over was it wasn't the possession of those books that made me cool or interesting or an expert or whatever. Having 20 UFO books doesn't make you an expert -- reading them and knowing what's in them does.
In the back of my mind I have thought, "man, I have a lot of books!" but in reality I had a lot of books out in boxes and on shelves in my garage, not being read or enjoyed.
I feel a little lighter this morning. I feel good. I still have my most favorite books in my computer room on a bookshelf, and I kept a few things that were pointless but that I still have an attachment to (all my old D&D manuals). But, yeah, I feel okay.
Shedding
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AArdvark
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