Book people - want a laugh?

[fred_mouse]

I think I've mentioned previously that I signed up to the 52 week unclutter challenge already. Week 7's challenge is 'books and bookshelves'. The full link is here, but the laugh out loud point was the first dot point of 'today's task'. Quoting the relevant bit:

TODAY’S TASK: DECLUTTER YOUR BOOK COLLECTION AND BOOKSHELVES AND PURGE ALL BOOKS THAT YOU NO LONGER NEED.

• Go through your entire book collection
  
• Keep your favourites and ones that you cannot part with
  
• Donate ones for purging to a second-hand book store or sell eBay etc
  
• Minimise your cookbooks and only keep ones you actually cook from
  
• Rearrange your bookshelves with the books you’re keeping and consider organising them in alphabetical order for easy access.
  
• Store cookbooks together, textbooks together etc.

They also say laugh worthy statements about If you have lots of books just lying around the house, it’s most likely that you really don’t have a proper bookshelf sorted or even a few cubby areas for books and an implication that this might mean you don't know how many books you own (I mean, sure, I don't know the exact number. But I know it to an order of magnitude -- my catalogue count plus <100 uncatalogued for reasons + all the picture books)

Comments

[kalloway]

I have a bookroom and can't keep it organized or from having piles. And this is after several merciless prunes and another one ongoing.

I do need to sort cookbooks, though. I'm bad about grabbing anything interesting from the library's quarter-a-book sale shelf and then never actually making anything from them. Or maybe I just need to get more creative with cooking finally.

[fred_mouse]

We also have a book room that has had two brief periods (<1 week each) in the entire time we have lived here (14 years) where all the books were on shelves and accessible. I am not yet at merciless pruning. I have given myself permission to leave that until the last of my children leaves home. As none of them have yet, I figure I've lots of time.

I have sorted the cookbooks. I tend to go to the last day of the Save The Children Fund booksale, which is 'buy a box' day, and then when I've run out of other things to fill the space, pack it with cookbooks. I have one shelf of 'yes, I'll probably use these' and one of 'there is at least one recipe in here that I'm interested in, or they have sentimental reasons for keeping'. If I can't fit a book on those shelves, something has to go.

[musyc]

There are four bookcases in this room alone, and half those shelves are double-shelved. I think there are ten bookcases in the house, not counting assorted endtables and nightstands with books. I might be able to go through the entire collection in under a week, though to be honest it would take a couple of days max if I was the sole arbiter of what stays. (No, the sign language books from a single course you took five years ago do not need to stay, dear family.)

And I have to give a bit of o.O to the alphabetical. Maybe within categories/genres, but not everything. And alphabetical by what? Title? Author surname? Series? So many choices!

[hooloovoo_42]

Same here - 4 bookcases in my bedroom alone, 10 in the house. Although some have videos & DVDs and photo albums on. And all the paperbacks are double shelved. Then there are the books on top of the cupboard in the spare room.

There is a bit of organisation, in that the biographies, craft books, cook books and plant books are together. But these are on oversized shelves to allow for the difference in sizes.

As for alphabetical - that's like sorting books by colour!

[fred_mouse]

I count at least 22 bookcases in the house, only two of which are half height, and one of which is 3m long. Only dvds are double stacked at present (parts of 2 bookcases), because several of those bookcases are standard depth but double sided, specifically for paperbacks. Like you, I have some of the non-fiction roughly grouped, so that I have a hope of finding things. Work books, cook books, craft, music, poetry.

Just to get last year's purchases in the right spot took two of us most of a day, doing a bit and then taking a break!

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

I've actually been sorting through my books - mostly to find how if I can still read the print.

[fred_mouse]

Oh, that must be heartbreaking, if there are loved books you can no longer read.

[athousandsmiles]

I lost most of my books (and a lot of other stuff) in a flood many years ago. I have no idea how many I had. Upwards of 500 I'd say. I only replaced a handful, and when Kindle became a thing, I happily latched on to that, because losing physical books cured me of my need to have them. I know a lot of people hate e-readers, but I think I was sort of traumatized by the flood, so for me it's nice to have all my books in e-form.

I think I make decisions based on that trauma. Like, if there was another flood/natural disaster coming, what would I want to save or what would I miss most? It may not be healthy, but there it is.

[fred_mouse]

Sympathies on the losses in the flood. I don't know how I'd deal with losing some of the books, because they are family heirlooms, and completely irreplaceable (I know, because I have been trying to get copies of some, so that the kids can have their own). But most of the rest I'd be able to deal with, because there are always more books.

The what would I save sounds like a sensible though to have had. Fire is our big risk here, and I know just what I'd throw in the car, depending on whether it was hours, minutes, or leave now type evacuation.

[harpers_child]

Reading the comments here makes me want to properly catalog my books.

We've got 4 6 foot bookcases with mostly paperbacks and 1 4 footer with the comics and gaming books. There are stacks of books in front of the books on the bookcases because we need less space between shelves. There's a permanent stack of books on top of the gaming bookcase of mostly reference coffee-table books that don't fit anywhere.

The ones we got for xmas are in a pile in the library chair so we can read those before we shelve them.

I have aspirations of doing custom bookcases in the library.

My husband unfortunately is an alphabetizer. I've given up my sorting by genre in the name of household peace.

[fred_mouse]

I find having my books catalogued is good, because it gives me a head start on not buying duplicates (I still do, if I really don't recognise something). I'm more on your side than your husband's, although within fiction I do put in alphabetical order. But I used to have them separated by whether I had read something or not (because I bought a lot of second-hand books much faster than I could read them once Eldest was born, and when the local library was throwing things out, it might be the only time I could get my hands on some of these works). I do have some sections pulled out -- but by publisher, not genre.

[starwatcher]

.
"Go through your entire book collection"

HAHAHAHAHAHA! *wipes eyes* They obviously don't understand hardcore bibliophiles. When I donated about 90% of my collection, it took me several weekends to sort and cull -- and I mean literally 8-10 hours of work on Saturday and Sunday, with the living room floor covered with books piled alphabetically by author's first-letter-of-last-name. Separate weekends for the separate genres -- romance, mystery/thriller, science fiction. Sci-fi took 2 weekends.

<sigh> I still have a dozen boxes of books that I can't give up -- back in boxes until I can organize the room with new bookshelves -- sometime this summer (maybe). But they take up a LOT less space than the collection I had previously!
.

[fred_mouse]

Oh, that sounds like a very exhausting time, sorting all those -- physically and mentally. And yes, so many books I'm not willing to consider giving up yet!

[illariy]

Haha, that is funny! Mine is manageable since I live in just one room but I definitely have piles. Two of them, both containing books I got from the public bookshelves that I have not read yet.

[fred_mouse]

I could probably insulate a room with my books. And we keep getting bookcases, and still have piles. Sounds like serious readers/book hoarders have piles regardless of scale!

[duskpeterson]

Yeah, I would have stopped right there at "Go through your entire book collection." I mean, one minute times several thousand books . . .

I devote one month a year to purging my book collection. I've been doing that for a decade now. That's why I no longer have twenty-four floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

[fred_mouse]

That sounds a very sensible strategy, so that it isn't overwhelming and constant. I might have to consider that as a way to go, when I start truly pruning my collection.

[duskpeterson]

I just got through the first stage of this year's purge (in order to donate books to an upcoming library booksale), and I've concluded for the first time that it's much easier these days for me to donate books gradually to the Littile Free Libraries in town. Instead of having to spend two days deciding the fate of hundreds of books, I can just grab a book or two on the way out the door to a downtown errand, and drop off those books at a Little Free Library on the way.

So constant donating seems to work better for me, as long as the book quantity of each donation is very small.

Now I just have to work on not bringing half a dozen books back from the Little Free Library each time. :)

[fred_mouse]

Hmm. Now I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about what is going to work for me. I suspect I'm some years off the big purge, which is scheduled for when the last of the bagusaii leave home (none yet, and even the eldest is still in uni). But working out an option like the Little Free Libraries might be an idea (we have a swap shelf at work, but I rarely want to read anything there. I have found one that tempts, but I must finish some others first!)

[duskpeterson]

A swap shelf at work sounds ideal!

[sauscony]

LOL, yeah right! I think I have all of my books cataloged and I have over 2700. I've been actively purging books since last year and I'm probably not even halfway done. I have a family who would like to actually spend time with me, so I think I'll stick to my slow and steady approach to weeding out my books.

I did manage to organize my books a bit last week though and played bookshelf Tetris well enough to make more room for some hardcovers without actually getting rid of any. ;)

[fred_mouse]

Oh, well done on rearranging the books to get more on the shelves. And on the working through and purging books from half your collection in the last year! Good luck with getting through the rest.