Getting Rid of Your Real Books

[sianon]

I am in the process of disposing of a considerable amount of my printbooks because they simply take up too much room and are unlikely to ever be read again. My non fiction books will never be replaced by e-books as I don't believe the technology will ever be good enough to display high resolution colour images. Nor will the technology replace the pleasure of looking at photographs which have been printed ob high quality paper and bound into a coffee table book.

[M0zza]

When I last moved I was able to offload a lot of my books to charity (along with a box of videos I thought I'd binned years ago). Being a hoarder, the rest stayed at my fathers.

By the sounds of it most of my relatives have been pilfering them over the last couple of years, but I still have more books to take to charity when I get back to the UK. I can't keep them, the wife would kill me. I'll just have to hoard digitally.

But then I have enough ebooks to keep me going till doomsday.

[zelda_pinwheel]

this weekend i had a small clear-out and gave away about 20 paperbacks. these were all old books that i have since found PD texts of ; i only give away a pbook if i have an e version or i am POSITIVE i will never want to read it again (that case is pretty rare). i was really pleased to give them away since i have so many books i literally don't know where to put them anymore, and these in particular were old and tending to be dusty and not very inviting (especially since i am allergic to dustmites).

i can't bear to throw a book away no matter how old and dusty it is but there are plenty i would love to see go nonetheless, for lack of space and dust issues. however there are also plenty i will never give away, even if i do get an e version, either because they are good quality editions, or art books, or because i like the covers, or there is a sentimental attachment, or...

- i gave a few to a friend who stopped by,
- some to a café near my house which has an informal lending library (a big bookshelf full of books, the "official" rule is bring a book / take a book but they don't hold you to it, in practice you can take whatever you like),
- others i will donate to my library for their "book exchange" which is just a table in the entry full of free books donated by members, you can take whatever interests you. they hold one every few months.
- i could also give them away through freecycle but since i have other options that's usually a last resort.

i like knowing that they are still out there and other people will read them ; it would be sad to leave them eternally sitting on shelves here never getting any attention.

of course i also just bought around 10 new paperbooks recently (not available in e versions...) so it feels a little like "two steps forward, one step back."

funny story, one of the new paperbooks is an omnibus edition with 3 novels in it. it's almost 600 pages long, slightly oversize, *really* heavy. almost the size of a phone directory (from before online yellowpages ) it was the first paperbook i read since i got my eb1150. when i picked it up for the first time, all i could think was "arg ! there's no possible way to hold this with one hand ! and it's so heavy ! and it's too thick to open very well so the text near the binding is hard to read !! and ARG !! when i turn on my side in bed, the top half of the book blocks the light from the page i'm trying to read !! and my thumb is getting sore now and my wrist is tired from propping it up !!!" i forgot about all that, with my eb1150... i wish i could find that book in e version !!!

i guess i'm definitely convinced by the ebook device experience...

[nekokami]

I still own nearly every book I've bought or been given, but most of them are now in boxes because we just don't have room for enough shelves in our present house. I'd pass on most of my paperbacks and manga if I could get them all in non-DRM ebooks. Many of them aren't available anywhere, even on the darknet. I don't have time to scan them all. I wish I could be in a club where it was ok to swap scans with others who owned the same book in paper. (I guess I'd still have to keep the paper versions in storage somewhere if I did that, but at least I'd have access to the content more easily than I do now!)

I had a difficult time giving away the books in the only major purge I've ever done, just before we moved to this house. Most of what I gave away were books I'd been given by someone else purging their library that I'd never gotten around to reading and wasn't really interested in trying to read anymore. The library wouldn't take them. We ended up giving them to a charity store.

[astra]

Originally Posted by nekokami

but most of them are now in boxes because we just don't have room for enough shelves in our present house.

That's a point when I would give away the books. I cannot stand having books in boxes.

[zulugroove]

I wouldnt throw away any book just to free my shelf space. instead i gave my books from the childhood the local library. i still have around 100 books lying around, which i drag from one share appartement to the another. most of them are my all time favorits which i cant have enough of, like: kafkas and s. kings shorts, abbotts flatland, jaspers about the truth, tolstois war&peace, dantes divina commedia and so on. they are full of personal notes from different moments in my live. i like to reread them.

[Dennis1187]

When I retired in 2001, we sold our house, furniture, etc. and took up permanent living and traveling in our motorhome. I had to part with almost 2,000 books (hardcover, collectibles, etc.). I still had over 600 paperbacks that I stored at my daughter's, mostly fiction and fantasy. Over the last two years I have replaced 200+ and have acquired another 150 that I never had before --- all in ebook. I prefer Microsoft Reader and eReader, but have gotten files in .txt, pdf, html, etc. They are easily converted to almost any format you want. I have found several book sharing sites that keep the cost down. It is the only way I can continue to collect books and I love having 1,000 or more on my IPAQ at one time.

[woofb]

Originally Posted by Gideon

I've seen a lot of posts regarding people who get rid of their old books, clear up shelf space, etc. I'm just wondering if someone could elaborate on that.

I've just ordered a Cybook. It's going to be mainly used for reading copies of Those Books Wot I Ave Got In Storage Because They Don't Fit On The Shelf.

I have six or seven book storage boxes, and it's often a real pain to retrieve a particular book, particularly if it's under other boxes...

Woofb