When does it become a problem?

[nedthemumbler]

     
                            When does your shelf, collection or domestic library tip over into being a problem?

When it is difficult to navigate about the place, and is a fire hazard with complex tunnel systems rendering rescue by all bar specialist cave and mountain rescue crews all but impossible?

When your food and water and bed is the other end of a teetering labyrinth of back issues of readers digest and Private Eye you I'll probably never read any way?

                                     Basically are you a collector, hoarder? 

My gran is at the extreme, more dangerous end of this slope, whilst I am gambolling freely on the sun lit lowands.  We are both facing the same way though.  Thoughts?

Thanks.

[Janie Jones]

Get rid, Ned. Purge. You're never going to read or re- read them and if you do need to, they are online or in the library. Listen to me - I'm clutching your wrist and spitting slightly against your cheek. Get. Rid.

If you've got nice books, great, make a few bob on eBay and enjoy knowing that someone who loves it owns it now. If they aren't worth much, or even if they are, give them to your nearest Oxfam bookshop - they seem to make the most out of 2nd hand books - and don't forget Giftaid if you're a UK taxpayer. But don't hang on to books. You look like a knob, 'Look, everyone who comes to my house, I obviously can't demonstrate through my erudition and intellect how well read I am so please just look at these teetering piles of worthy tomes and edgy titles and take heed of how clever and esoteric I am.' Turn away, Ned. Get rid of the lot.

[Genevieve]

Yes, do it now while you have the energy and break the cycle.  Then invite your gran round for tea, show her how clean and fresh-smelling your house is and the wad of notes you've made from sales and offer to help her do the same.  Sorry it's a morbid thought but you'll only have to do the job after she's gone so it's better to start now.

[Serge]

Don't listen to these people, ned, they are wrong and I am right. Keep on piling things up. Never get rid of anything. You never know when you will be plagued in the middle of the night by a quote from a book you read ten years ago and you won't be able to rest until you look it up - and there it is. And then you might want to re-read that book. That's what books are for, to be read, and re-read. The only things I really regret are the books and records I have got rid of over the years, and don't get me started on the piles of old music magazines I got rid of when I moved to London. I'll never see those buggers again. A house full of books and records is a house that shows a life is well lived and enjoyed.

[newbridge]

I never get rid of books. If you're living in a weird dusty hoarder hovel that's more of a space management issue than an owning books issue. I do have a "problem" though in that I tend to acquire books that sound interesting at a much higher rate than I will ever be able to actually read.

[Old Gold Tooth]

I used to have about 600 books. Got rid of over half of them when I moved house and have since got rid of another hundred or so.

It felt like a physical pain to part with them but I felt so much better for having done it. As others have said, you're keeping them for no real reason. Life's too short to re-read that many books. And they take up so much bloody space.

Amazon marketplace made me a nice little sum of money for the rarer / newer books and Oxfam were very happy for the rest. Even got an email update the other day telling me they'd made seventy quid off my books. Everyone's a winner.

[manticore]

"Books do furnish a room".

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

" Books are just a load of crap ".

[marquis_de_sad]

Get rid of them.

[Serge]

Don't listen to them, ned! Buy more. Block up the windows. Daylight is over-rated. Block the doors. Who needs to go out? Just leave a ned-shaped space in the middle for you to fit into. Get rid of the furniture as well. It's only taking up space that could be filled with more books. Build an extension and fill it with more books. Then start colonising the neighbour's house. It's the only way.

[marquis_de_sad]

The ones you especially need to get rid of are those nice old penguin paperbacks. The fewer you have the more likely you'll read them.

[ASFTSN]

Don't get rid of them.

[marquis_de_sad]

I once read (in a book that like all of them I kept for over ten years) that every time Allen Ginsberg read a book, he would give it away once he'd finished it.

[manticore]

It's one of the great pleasures of life to look at other people's bookshelves. I have an artist friend who has a huge library of art books which are wonderful to just browse for hours.

[nedthemumbler]

Don't listen to them, ned! Buy more. Block up the windows. Daylight is over-rated. Block the doors. Who needs to go out? Just leave a ned-shaped space in the middle for you to fit into. Get rid of the furniture as well. It's only taking up space that could be filled with more books. Build an extension and fill it with more books. Then start colonising the neighbour's house. It's the only way.

Framed, and swiftly swallowed by a rolling wave of paperbacks.   Where's that snorkel?

[Galeee]

Don't get rid! When civilisation breaks down, and there's no electricity, never mind interweb, you can hire them out for food, moonshine or sex.

[bushwick]

recently had to move all stuff into storage to get house re-wired, and I am absolutely drowning in books. About 10 years ago I got obsessed with pulp novels (after getting back into the Pan Books Of Horror) and for the next few years bought hundreds of second hand books - horror, westerns, crap SF, crime/juvenile delinquent stuff, even the Confessions..books and the like. I've read a lot of em but haven't read one for years, if I'm honest. Some of them stink and are falling apart. Some are potentially worth money but not all. Some titles have made their way to ebooks now but some never will. I'm loathe to throw em out. And if you hand old scruffy paperbacks to charity they send them to be pulped whilst all the nice clean modern Dan Browns/JK Rowlings make the shelves. I like to think I'm preserving them for 'the good of the culture' but who am I kidding? I don't have kids and they will all be skipped when I die!

But the thing is, how can I get rid of a book like this?

http://www.trashcity.org/ARTICLES/tc06/06IBFS.HTM

or this?

http://glorioustrash.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-sharpshooter-7-headcrusher.html

[bushwick]

By the way, that Glorious Trash site is brilliant, but don't start reading it or you'll end up like me, drowning in indefensible trash novels!

[Serge]

I've mentioned on here before that most of my stuff is currently in storage, as I'm staying at my parents' house until I can afford to actually get my own place, and my stuff is essentially 45% books, 45% vinyl & CDs and 10% DVDs. But I had to be brutal and pare the books down (I wasn't touching the music), and did manage to get rid of about 400. I've nearly bought that many again since moving (two years ago), so will soon be piling up more than before.

[Astronaut Omens]

'Look, everyone who comes to my house, I obviously can't demonstrate through my erudition and intellect how well read I am so please just look at these teetering piles of worthy tomes and edgy titles and take heed of how clever and esoteric I am.'

By the way, that Glorious Trash site is brilliant, but don't start reading it or you'll end up like me, drowning in indefensible trash novels!

The people that are in real trouble are the people that are doing both of these things simultaneously. It happens.

[purlieu]

Keep the ones you love, your favourite books, the really interesting ones, the ones you know you'll revisit, the ones you didn't 'get' but feel might make more sense on a second or third read, the non-fiction ones that are genuinely useful. Get rid of the rest.
I used to have about 300 books, now I have about 50. It's nice to have a collection of favourites, but the rest are just taking up space. Charity shops will appreciate them, especially given that they get inundated with mainstream crime and romance novels that rarely get bought. Anything more interesting than that will go down a treat.