Weighed down by books

I’m going to try to loose 100 pounds this month: all paper. I have books, books, books, and paper files galore. Clearly, my book buying phases have not benefited from the Internet revolution. (Or if they have, God forbid the number of books I would have now.)

The sad thing is that I only use a small fraction of the books I have in any given month. I feel this most poignantly when

  • I pay my credit card bill, which still bears the scars of impulse book buying.
  • Ditto, my student loan.
  • In my back when I try to move them.
  • and of course the trobbing in my temples when I try to find one I actually need.

So, first, I’ gleening my files of those papers that exist as a word processor or PDF file on my home computer and on the Internet. But the book question is bigger. We’re taught to love them, and spend all available money on them: it isn’t right or proper to talk people out of buying books, is it? (Disclosure: I sell books in my Day Job.)

Well, I’m coming up up with my own gotta-have list. Now I need you to add your must haves in the comments.

2 Replies to “Weighed down by books”

  1. I guess my answer to the problem would be to give away the books either to friends in need, or through my local Freecycle group.

  2. — With my small apartment, I’ve considered doing the same thing by thinning my book heard. Must keep items from my own shelves: my Bible and concordance, 2 rabbinical commentaries, the King’s Chapel Prayerbook, THE PRESSENCE OF ABSENCE; ON EPIPHANY & PRAYER by Dorris Grumbach, Hosea Ballou’s TREATISE ON ATONEMENT, Adin Ballou’s CHRISTIAN NON-RESISTANCE, a book on surviving sexual abuse written by a former congregant from the Friends Church in Muncie, Ron Sider’s RICH CHRISTIANS IN AN AGE OF HUNGER, a copy of the Tao te Ching, 4 hymnals from various denominations, FUNDRAISING FOR DUMMIES, my collection of 10 antique Universalist books, my grandmother’s German to English parallel Bible, and my collection of 10 Sunday School curricula.

    Which means I have an awfull lot I could give away, or take to the used book store. But I also have a stack of about 12 books which I’ve bought, but have not yet read. They are a variety of novellas by Edgar Allen Poe, some religious stuff, and a book paleontology and biological extinction.

    –Derek

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