I ended 2010 with a book purge. I don’t delete books from my LibraryThing catalog, because I want the record that I did have them, but I set up a new collection called “donated/unshelved.” The books I put there came from several places:
- Books I no longer have and had previously tagged “given away or donated.” I virtually moved them to the new collection and removed the tag – it will be easier for me to keep up with them in a folder of their own.
- Books I’ve read and never planned to keep, which included most of the books I read in 2010 and hadn’t already given away. I just need to remove them from the house; so far, they’ve made it to the garage. I think that in the future I’ll keep an open box out there and put books I’m not keeping in it as soon as I’m done with them; that will help remind me to take them to the donation center and free up the shelf space where I was tossing them.
- Books that I haven’t read and no longer think I will. Some have languished on my shelves for so long that I’d forgotten I had them at all, and in just about all cases, I’d forgotten why I wanted to read them in the first place. These books are the ones I feel most regretful about purging, but they may be the ones that most needed to be purged.
- Books that were included in my TBR collection on LibraryThing, but that I didn’t actually see when I went through the shelves – therefore, I had to assume that I must have purged them already. Lesson learned: I faithfully log books into LT when I get them, but I need to log them OUT of LT when I get rid of them. (This will also apply to the books I’ll be tossing into that box in the garage…”
In addition to the already-read books I’m passing on, I removed about 40 books from the “to read” collection – which still leaves just over 300 there. There are 90-some-odd books, most in very good condition, headed to the Friends of the Library bookstore, and the total count in the “donated/unshelved” collection from all points of origin currently stands at 185.
New additions to TBR Purgatory:
For me, purchased:
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, by Ben Mezrich
29: A Novel, by Adena Halpern (from the wishlist)
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, by Francine Prose (from the wishlist)
New to the WishList:
Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum
Healer: A Novel by Carol Cassella
Faith: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh
Doc: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell
The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken
Upcoming reviews:
The Lotus Eaters: A Novel, by Tatjana Soli
Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, by Gail Caldwell
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
