No book left behind? Sadly, no.

Like Joe was moving homes a few weeks back, and Clare has done a couple of times in recent years, I’m in the process of moving. My family and I aren’t moving very far–just to the next town over, Manhattan Beach. This new town is closer to our tennis club and is known to be slightly tony. (Read: Old people live there). Our current home is in Hermosa Beach, which is famous for having a certain Animal House vibe. We’re about 30 years too old to fully appreciate the finer merits of Hermosa, like the fun of slinging beer bottles into shrubbery as one staggers home from a pub crawl at 2 a.m.

The main challenge in getting our current house prepared for sale is that we need to do a little decluttering. Make that a massive amount of decluttering. My husband and I are both pack rats–we’re the same species, just slightly different  breeds and scale. (Scale-wise, I’m like a Jack Russell Terrier and he’s more of a Great Dane. But I don’t want to get personal here.)

My husband doesn’t like to throw out paper, and I don’t like to part with books. Over 11 years of marriage our  combined traits have made our house a bit…how shall I say…full.

So we’re currently analyzing everything that’s been collecting here over the years, and making some hard choices.  My hardest choices involve books. How do you let them go? Where do you send them? I have a strange possessiveness about books. I can’t even part with ones I didn’t enjoy and may not have even finished. I have this weird suspicion that there’s a kernel of something useful hidden in each one of them, something that I shouldn’t let go of, just in case I ever need that kernel down the road. (It’s my version of hoarding. I totally empathize with the crazy people on Hoarders whose houses are filled to the ceiling with old plastic bags, bent forks, buttons, and the occasional cat carcass.) You just never know when you’ll need those things again. (Except for the cats. The poor things probably just lost their way in the jungle pile.)


Sadly, I’m having to downsize when it comes to my physical books. I’m convinced we could live in Versailles with every wall lined with bookshelves, and we still wouldn’t have enough space for all of these books. But what do you do with the ones you decide to let go of? Donate them to a library? Goodwill? 

I actually found a site called BookCrossing, where you can “release your book into the wild”. The idea is that you let other readers know where you left your book(s), and those people will come pick them up, and then pass them on. I guess the system even lets you track your book as it zigzags the globe, checking in from time to time like the Travelocity gnome. The whole thing sounds fun, kind of like the Readership of the Traveling Books.  But I’m not so sure the authorities would be thrilled if I released my entire stash into the wild. For example: Where do you dump 10 years’ worth of so-so mystery cozies? I guess I could leave the knitting mystery near a yarn shop.  Maybe I could park the restaurant reviewer mystery and an old Zagat guide near CPK. But I’m afraid I just have too many books to “set free” all at once. It might even violate some local dumping ordinance. I might run into a humorless merchant or constable who doesn’t appreciate my attempt to create my own episode of Lit Gone Wild.  

So, what would you do with a ginormous book pile that you must somehow unload? We are working with a professional organizer who will help us resell things, including books. But I would hate for my letting-go process to turn into a tawdry commercial transaction. Selling them would make me feel kind of unclean about the whole thing, like I’m turning into a Ferengi from Star Trek. But really, what other choices are there? Any ideas?

21 thoughts on “No book left behind? Sadly, no.

  1. Kathryn,

    A few years ago, we faced the book-disposal dilemma. We own a summer cottage in a remote seaside town, where the population triples during the summer. We carted up a vanful of paperbacks, mostly fiction classics (from my undergraduate days as a literature major) and mysteries. It seemed like a wonderful idea at the time: clear out our bookshelves at home to stock our shelves at the cottage. But after a year in a damp, unheated cottage, the paperbacks started to mildew. Libraries didn’t want them, and nobody buys them at yard sales, anymore, so here is how we disposed of them:

    We offered the owner of a bed & breakfast, his pick of books. He chose two cartons-full. The remainder, we donated to a thrift shop, which is very popular with the summer crowd, who go there for inexpensive puzzles, games, toys, etc. They sold all the books (for 10 cents each), within a week.

  2. That sounds like a great solution, Marbles! I did have a sneaking suspicion that the libraries will only want high demand books. I feel that thrift shops are in the future for most of these books. We’re creating a mini-Mt. Everest in the house that is tagged “sell or donate.” I’ll guess I’ll leave it to the goddesses of Fate which book ends up where.

  3. When we moved to the Caribbean five years ago we had to divest ourselves of about 2,000 books. Some we could sell, some we gave to friends (who learned to duck when they saw us coming!) but Goodwill didn’t want them. Hardly anyone wanted them. A used bookstore in town advised us that a lot, probably 1,000 or so, should just be thrown away. Turns out there was a reason we’d been able to fish about 500 of them out of a Dumpster behind the library – no one wanted them. They’re even hard to recycle. The bindings made them difficult to recycle. The bookseller was setting up a book recycling program, using a band saw to cut off the spines so the pages could be recycled. It hurt, a lot, but the fact is, old books aren’t the treasured items they once were. When I finally made myself see them not as treasure but as an anchor that was holding us back, I was able to toss them overboard. But it really was painful. And I’ve still got another 2,000 or so in a storage unit that I pay a monthly rent on because I just couldn’t let them go.

    • I so understand the anguish attached to that, John. I come from a family that treasures and respects books. We have leather bound collections dating back to the 1800’s (which we’ll keep forever). But the mass paperbacks and even many hardbacks will have to go. I have become a total convert to e-readng, mostly because it allows me to increase the font size.

  4. Kathryn, my local library accepts book donations which it then sells in a second-hand store it maintains. I also have several retirement homes which accept books from me on a monthly basis. Good luck with the move and safe journeys!

  5. A supermarket near me has a drop box, similar to a Goodwill box, that takes books of any kind. It’s associated with a literacy program. There are plenty of groups, including public libraries, that will accept donations.

    • I have seen those Goodwill boxes around town, Dana. That’s a good idea, just to drop them in. They’ll be able to open a used book wong with what I send their way.

  6. The Children’s Hospital in my Canadian city has a major used book sale three times a year so that’s where most of my books that I can part with go. You can drop the books off at a fire hall which makes it easy to make a donation. We also have Friends of the Library, Humane Society, MS Society and Rotary Club sales. Might be worth checking with not-for-profits to see if they have sales or could use books.

  7. The above are all great suggestions. If you lived up here in the arctic, and had the the transportation to do so, there are cabins in the wilderness that act as defacto libraries for travellers/trappers/hermits. These places are stocked with books by whoever goes out there and can have an amazing selection sometimes. The fairly dry climate also means they can really last. I’ve seen books from the 1920s on the shelves of next to new paperbacks.

    • Good idea, Diane. I’ve about decided I’m going to leave this Mammoth Mountain in the pile marked “sell or donate,” and let the organizer deal with it. She’ll probably do something like that with them.

  8. Hermosa reminds me of Madison, WI near campus where student rental properties have signs posted out front – DON’T PUKE ON THE LAWN.

    Wisconsin has a really cool program where little boxes are set up in neighbors containing books anyone can borrow or take. People take, leave, and swap books at these stations all over the city. Any of us could probably supply a city with what we have in our personal libraries. I thought it was a really great idea because it is homegrown and nurtured by readers in any given neighborhood.

  9. I suggest an ad on Craig’s list. You never know who will show up and cart them away, and for what reason. During one of my moves, (Pre-Craig’s list) I put the entire contents of my house up for sale. Two young guys showed up and bought the entire collection of books, although I can’t now remember what they planned to do with them.

    But interestingly, that broke my addiction to owning books forever. Now I am mainly a library kind of girl. If it had happened today, I’d probably have become a Kindle kind of girl… and I may yet!

  10. There are a couple of local shops here in Missoula that buy and sell used books. It’s thriving! And Goodwill is an excellent place to dump the old titles. And they have plenty of great buys in there, too. I’m still looking for a good lava lamp.

    Hey! I met my wife in Hermosa Beach. Band house on Second Street – just up the hill from the infamous Pitcher House. Moving to MB is a good idea. I can just see the stack of book boxes the size of a Buick piled high in your living room. Ha!

  11. I box up small boxes (20 or so books)by genre and put them up for free on Craigslist. I insist people take the whole box and not pick and choose. People are usually happy to risk getting a couple of books they’ve already read in exchange for free ones. I managed to clean out about 15 boxes in 2 days when making room for our basement reno. (I advertised specifically for mystery fans, thriller fans, romance fans, etc.)

    Still I have books coming out of my ears. I thought e-books were going to be the answer for me, but after three years, I’ve gone back to paper books. E-reading is just not the same experience for me–it’s far less engaging than a “real” book.

    And browsing/buying on Amazon may be more convenient, but it’s nowhere near as fun as the hours I used to spend in bookstores and used bookstores looking for new authors to discover.

    Now I’ve gone off on a tangent…

  12. I feel your pain, Kathryn. When Don and I moved from DC to Lauderdale, we downsized our libraries and still moved 2000 pounds of books.
    Veterans homes, assisted living and hospice accept books. Hospice especially likes cozies and humorous mysteries. Our local library sells them and I give the ones in top condition to my favorite indie store, and it resells them.
    Books are like kittens. They need to be placed in good homes.

  13. When we closed the flea market, I sent 7000 books to an auction where they sold for about a quarter each on average. I know some went to dealers and some when to readers. Every year I give myself a $10 budget at the library sale. I usually end up with about 5 boxes full. I try and grab a few coffee table ones that I know will sell. The rest is pure fun, like making Book Haiku:

    http://www.anarmyofermas.com/2012/08/bag-for-buck-romance-book-ku.html

    When the stack gets too high, I either donate it back to the library (sort of recycling) or at a yard sale we have a local used book dealer who is usually good for cleaning you out.

    By getting rid of books, you can get more books.

    Terri

  14. My husband and I just went through the same thing, plus he had just bought me my first Kindle. So, I had to decide which books I wasn’t willing to get rid of (my Twilight collection, my fav Stephen King’s that I reread,Some Autobiographies I loved, and most importantly the books in my writing genre and research books). Everything else went into boxes and when friends came over they were not allowed to leave without taking a book or two. What was left after that I donated to my local library. Good luck on your new journey!

  15. I donate books to our local library for their book sale. The money they earn goes back into library facilities and programs. Decluttering is the main reason I won’t move, aside from loving our house. We have too much to ever get rid of all this stuff.

  16. Sadly enough, something important to you–your precious books–means little to others. I found a university library that took some of mine and saw to it they got to bookless places in Africa–I have to hope in the English-speaking parts of it. But it’s hard to part with books. I can only do it when a kind of fit or seizure comes over me, a type of self-loathing caused by clutter and glut. Then a great purge takes place,very quickly, followed by an awful silence and remorse.

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