Get rid of books?!

For some of you, the very title of this post is heresy. You have Mt. Everest-sized mountains of books, you’re proud of them, and the thought of discarding any of them . . . Let’s just say that it’s like someone deciding to chop a few dozen feet off Everest to make it easier to climb. It ain’t happening.

But there’s something about the start of a new year/early spring that makes me want to organize and purge my belongings. After the clutter of Christmas-y paraphernalia, I long for breathing space. Clean counters, organized closets, that sort of thing. It calms my mind. So I start getting rid of extra things, including books, by donating to charity.

Even for those who may be loathe to part with any beloved books, there may come a time when circumstances force you to do it. Moving costs, downsizing, the lack of space in your existing location: you may have to part with a few of your books.

By the way, I always donate old books to charity. Our local library has a spot for donating books to the “Friends of the Library” bookstore. (It raises money for the library!) I’ve also donated some books to other charity thrift store places. I haven’t had much luck selling to second hand stores like 2nd & Charles, but some people do, and if I really needed money I could do it.

Some people like to give books to friends. I never know which friends might like which book, so this has never been an option I’ve used.

Look, if you give the book away, someone else has the chance to enjoy it. That’s a chance they won’t have if it’s sitting unread on your shelf. Why hoard books? You can’t take them with you when you die! (And some unlucky relative will have to deal with them.)

Here’s how I decide which books to keepers.

I used to go through my shelves in a half-hazard manner, asking myself, “Do I want to get rid of this?” But that never seemed efficient or orderly to me.

This year, I went through the shelves multiple times, but each time I looked for books that I HAD to keep, based on three criteria. Once those were off the shelves, it was relatively easy to see which books I could part with.

It was important for me to physically take the “keepers” off the shelves. Yes, this made a little more work later. But it helped me have clarity about the remaining books.

I worked in three rounds. That worked for me, but other people may want to consider these three factors at the same time.

 

One: Was this book a gift?

I don’t tend to receive books as gifts often, and the ones I do receive are from important people in my life and have sentimental value. Books like 101 Famous Poems, a gift from my late grandfather on my 10th birthday. The set of Jane Austen novels and A Tale of Two Cities, a birthday gift from my husband the year we were engaged. The biography of Herman Melville that I received from a favorite professor after completing my thesis on Moby-Dick.

These are titles that are readily available in bookstores or online. The worth is in the sentimental value. If my house was on fire and I had a few precious minutes to grab books before the building went up in flames, these are the ones I’d carry with me through the smoke and flames. That is an exaggeration, of course. I would grab my laptop first, and then the books.

Obviously, if I disliked the giver, then I would ditch the book ASAP.

 

Two: Did this book change my life?

I’m not talking about books that I really, really enjoyed or loved or whatever gushy adjective I might use on Goodreads. Compelling, inspiring, satisfying, fascinating: none of this matters if it didn’t change me.

These are books that changed me as a person. I can divide my life into before and after reading it. I am a different person because I opened that cover and read the words.

Realistically, there aren’t that many books this powerful.

Books like Toni Morrison’s Beloved fit this category, as does The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Both opened my eyes to the horror of racism, which I had only had a superficial knowledge of before this, and forced me to confront the racism in my country, my heritage, and ultimately, my own heart.

Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien captured me with its powerful language and storytelling, and I’m no longer complacent about war or the effects on civilians and soldiers alike.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville perfectly expressed the questions I was dealing with during that time period. Questions about God, good and evil, language and the failure of language to describe internal pain. Questions that I wrestled with all throughout college and graduate school as I dealt with untreated mental illness and desperate loneliness. It was all in that book. Oh, yeah, there was a whale in there, too.

There are other books that changed me, but ultimately, it’s not a long list. It probably isn’t for you, either.

 

Three: Did this book spark a strong emotional reaction from me?

I’m not an outwardly emotional person. If a book makes me cry or laugh, then it got put in this category. For other, more emotional people, you might laugh/cry at many books and this category won’t work for you.

Books by Alexander McCall-Smith and P.G. Wodehouse made me laugh. (McCall-Smith’s the only author I’ve ever read who can consistently make me laugh aloud.) I remember laughing my head off at a fast food restaurant while reading the second chapter of G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. This is a fairly small category.

There are a handful of scenes that spark tears in my eyes each time I read them. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khalid Hosseini, a young woman is in labor in modern Afghanistan. Laila needs a cesarean, but there is no medicine readily available. She will have to have surgery without anesthesia. As the woman’s husband’s older wife watches, the ob-gyn cuts into Laila. The other wife states that she will always admire Laila for how long it was before she began to scream. Even describing the scene shakes me. I’m deeply moved.

Other books that produced strong, visible emotions from me include A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines. I can’t get through the final chapter without tearing up. The Orchard of Lost Souls, by Nadifa Mohamed had a similar effect on me.

By the time I had gone through these three categories, I had a nice pile of books on my coffee table. These were the non-negotiables, the books that I refused to discard no matter what.

At that point, my eight-foot bookcase looked like a jack-o-lantern because of the gaping holes in the rows.

Now I asked myself these questions.

1. Have I read it?

Look, I was an English major. I had multiple classics on my shelves that I always intended to read and never did. If I hadn’t read the books in the past ten years or so, I probably wouldn’t do so now. You know what they say about the road to hell? It’s paved with good intentions, and I daresay some of those intentions are never to-be-read books.

And all those Norton anthologies: why had I clung to them? All the content was available online! The print was small and hard to read. Sure, it had my brilliant notes scribbled in the margins, but some new reader might derive satisfaction and insight from reading my genius-level marginalia, right?

This year, I finally admitted the truth. If I hadn’t read Milton’s Complete Poetry and Selected Prose in the past 20+ years, I was unlikely to do so now. I had to purchase it for a class the semester I dropped out of school because of sickness. I tried to re-use the book at my new university, but I had to drop that class, too, because of sickness. Obviously, I wasted my $75. I also admitted that I only kept it because it looked impressive on the shelf.

It’s been over 20 years since I graduated from college, and clinging to them was like wearing your high school letter man jacket in college. Move on.

Plus, some of these books were associated with bad memories. Clinging to them was like hanging onto a wedding album after you’ve divorced the jerk. Time to move on. 

2. Did I like it?

There’s no point in keeping a book I dislike! It was surprising to me how many books I kept that I didn’t really enjoy but felt obligated to keep. It was freeing to ditch those!

3. Would I re-read it?

If not, it could go, too.

4. Was this book readily available at the local library if I chose to re-read it?

If yes, then it could say bye-bye and join the donations pile.

If no, then it could stay.

At this point, I’d gathered several boxes of books to donate. So I began putting the non-negotiables back on the shelves. After a few times of struggling to fit books in their proper places and still maintain “breathing room” on the shelves, I was finished.

The shelves looked orderly. I put the fiction in alphabetical order by the author’s last name and the non-fiction grouped by category according to the Dewey Decimal system. This makes sense to me and I can easily find whatever book I want.

This is my process for cleaning off my bookshelves. I know lots of people might have other systems (or no system at all). Some might have other criteria for deciding what to keep/discard. If so, I’d love to hear about them!

Do you get rid of books? If so, how do you decide what to keep or discard? If not, share how you find all the space to store them.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with others!