The Great Book Purge of 2012

Moving sucks.   I know, it's not an earth-shattering statement, but it's fair to say that it's a pretty universal truth.  It's especially true when you've lived in a place for awhile that has a lot of storage.  This means a.) you've had time to accumulate a lot of stuff and b.) enough space to store said stuff out of sight so you don't realize how much stuff you have until it's time to pack it up.

I've always had a good number of books.  I'm sure more than the average person, but over the last two years, it's gotten completely out of control.  There were many contributing factors:

1. The Big Borders stores closed.  This meant lots of books on sale, so I could buy more than I usually did.  

2. I discovered the book section at the Goodwill.  It's really hard to pass up a book I might want to read when it only costs $1.00.  

3. The Borders Express stores closed (see #1 above).

4. I discovered the Friends of the Santa Cruz Libraries book sales.  Books by the pound!  Books by the bag!

After about a year and a half I'd added hundreds of books to my collection.  I'm not exactly sure how many I had prior to Borders closing in April, but I'd guess close to 300.  When I started the purge last week, according to Shelfari I owned 1016 books.  Over A THOUSAND books.  About 20% are e-books, but still, that's 800 books taking up space in my house.  It doesn't seem possible, but it's true.  What did I do?  Yikes.  A thousand books is a little crazy.  I mean could start my own small used book store (specializing in romance novels).  Really.

Now for the reason for the post -- the great book purge of 2012.  I've gone through most of the books that were on the shelves in my bedroom and culled the pile some but I'm still having trouble letting go.  And I haven't even tackled the books in the front closet. *sigh*  

In the days since I started this post, I did tackle the books in the front closet (which is now empty) and got rid of a bunch of books; most of which went back to the Goodwill, where I purchased them in the first place.  Someone said to think of it as a $1 rental fee.  I like that. :)  But after all that sorting and all those bags of donated books, according to Shelfari, I own 876 books.  It sure seemed like I got rid of more than 150 books.  And that doesn't include the two bags of books I'd like to sell online.  I've spent so much time sorting, moving and organizing them that I haven't had any time to read any of them!  Oh the irony!