The Purge

As a bibliophile I have a perennial problem that makes housework a greater challenge than it normally is: books all over the floor. Not just the floor, even, but on any and every flat surface available. So, today I decided to make a frontal assault on this problem. I'm getting rid of my books. I've increasingly lost the tendency to accumulate possessions over the years because I just move too often and have too little storage space. There's quite a few positive aspects to an unencumbered existence.

I'm not getting rid of all of them, of course (I've had books since before I could read!), just the ones that aren't worth the time and effort to re-read and thus are taking up space, collecting dust, and straining my back when I move. So, of course, the question became, which which of my books are actually worth keeping? The answer, I discovered, was: painfully few.

Some are just so battered that I'm going to replace them, but the truth is that a lot of the books I own just aren't that good. Either that, or I've outgrown them. I'm keeping a few for sentimental reasons (Where the Red Fern Grows, for instance) and those that I would rate a 4+, but the rest are getting shipped to the gulag. I wonder why so few of them are worth keeping. Is it just that my taste in books hasn't been that good? Do I keep walking past the good ones on the shelf?

Or is the truth that there really aren't that many really good books out there, regardless of the huge masses of them in print?

I don't think that I'll miss them (I didn't when I abandoned them for a year), although getting them out of the house is going to take some work. I wish Half-Price would pick them up like the Salvation Army will pick up donated furniture. Heck, I'd let Half-Price have them for FREE if they'd just come and GET them.

My housemate asked me a bizarre question, too: what will your kids read? My answer to this is: they can buy their own durn books and carry them around themselves.

All this makes me wonder why e-books haven't taken off more. I'm not going to suddenly stop reading mediocre books just because I've stopped keeping them. Actual books are nice in that they don't require batteries and they're portable (individually, anyway), but if that could be solved reasonably well I, at least, would love to be able to buy my mediocre books online and be able to read them right away. I know there are some devices for this out there. I'll have to look around at them.