Comments on: The Great New Year Clean-up: Books

By: Jasi

Jasi — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:19:10 +0000

That’s AWESOME, Pam. Count me in. I’ll start researching that tomorrow. Thanks for a creative and kind solution.

By: Pam

Pam — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:44:31 +0000

Jasi, I saw a story on the news in the last couple of weeks about a school in Africa that was collecting old text books….there was a shipping co, (fed-x or UPS) that was collecting them and shipping them for free….of course I can’t remember the details….no short term or long term memory…..but maybe a google would help you find it. God Bless, Pam, South Bend

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:16:31 +0000

Oh, I just remembered - Bookcrossing. Depending on where you live it may be more or less popular, but the idea is to leave the book out for someone else.

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:30:26 +0000

We are really loving our library. This is helping me to not buy more books.

By: Jasi

Jasi — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:20:15 +0000

I’m super at buying a book, reading it, loving it and passing it on permanently.

“Dear Friend, Read it. Love it. Give it to someone else who will love it. Hot potato. Chop chop.”

So I only keep 10 books for snuggling. And they are mostly signed William Gibson paperbacks (they take up less room).

Buuuuutttt… that doesn’t account for text books. DH and I have a ga-gillion text books from our college days. They’re old, half don’t even apply to our jobs and there’s a layer of dust thick as.. And it hurts us to just recycle them at the curb as they were SO expensive (once upon a time).

So what do we do with the text books we do not reference?

By: Heather

Heather — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:55:27 +0000

This is on my to-do list as well! What perfect timing. I called the library and they will take them for their sale, which is where I’ll take all the ones I can’t sell on Amazon. Tooooo many books. No wonder I feel like I don’t have any space.

By: hsgbdmama

hsgbdmama — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:42:08 +0000

One of my projects is to purge books I know I won’t read or books that the kids have outgrown that I don’t want to keep (twaddle all around).

I’ve been building up a collection of classic books for our family library through our library’s excellent semi-annual used book sales, for a fraction of buying books new, plus its a small way I can financially support my library. It is fun to get hundreds of $$$ of books for under $30.

I’ll probably donate my unwanted books to the library book sale too.

By: Gina

Gina — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:32:53 +0000

I decided to deal with the extra books that I couldn’t trade with friends or donate to the library–romances, mostly–so I went to Paperbackswap. All of my more literary trade books went immediately and a lot of those shameful romances nobody else wants to read went quickly, too. In the first hour, I had 15 requests for my books! Now I have equal amounts of credit for books myself!

By: Badbadivy

Badbadivy — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:49:21 +0000

What great ideas you guys have for places to take books! I know it’s hard to get rid of books. As for me, I have WAY more books than I have shelves, so I have stacks of books next to shelves, it’s really time to purge.

And I wish I had a used bookstore closer to me! Except then I might have a lot more books, ha!

By: Mrs. Mordecai

Mrs. Mordecai — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:05:27 +0000

I was just planning on weeding out our books since we’re moving at the end of the month. It’s so painful. There’s a great essay about this in the book Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman.