Recently the New York Times asked “How do you decide to get rid of a book.” The answers from six authors and one book store owner are worth reading if you too are the ‘ I would rather read than have sex, what bestsellers are on sale this week, I want to die in my favorite book store’ kind of person.
Which books we get rid of goes to the root of what type of readers we are. I read fiction and biographies to relax and for the escapism into a different life and someone else’s reality. If I don’t like it I pass it on or take it to the second hand book store. I am not snobbish about my library; hardback, trade paperback or written in the margins from a garage sale if I enjoyed reading it….it stays.
As a business coach business books get rotated quickly as they have to be current. There are of course the classics that all entrepreneurs should read such as: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber or the timeless Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
The majority of life self-help books are overly clichéd and devoid of any genuine long term life solutions, unless it is exceptionally thorough I don’t buy much of the self-improvement genre. This criterion makes it easy to maintain a manageable selection.
While I have a minimalist attitude when to clutter in general, obviously this doesn’t seen to apply when it comes to books.There are piles in the living room and dining room, my office shelves are full and what does the top of my beautiful antique bedside table look like any way? I’ll just put a basket underneath to catch the spill off and stop it from groaning.
I can definitely relate to Joshua Ferris sentiments in his last line of the NY Times piece “………..I leave and come back, and the books I find there tell me I’m home.”
I must also confess that while I will not read about what famous people are wearing, eating or where they vacation; I am curious about what books they are reading. So Lesley Jane Seymour , Al Gore, Rahm Emanuel, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Michaëlle Jean, Angela Merkel what are you taking to bed?
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Jill: I enjoyed reading this. You are a true book lover. Although I like books very much, I only keep them if I LOVE them, or need them for frequent reference.
Love the new look of your blog.
Ellen Besso
I’m a huge book lover and have 3 bookcases chock full of books, probably 150 of which I still haven’t read yet because I have a hard time passing up the sale tables in Chapters or Indigo! Once in a while I do go through them and try to decide which ones to get rid of and when I do, I usually take them to a used book store. These are the books that I remember didn’t thrill me. My collection includes many different genres of books, from self-help & spirituality, to poetry, historical fiction, Irish fiction, romance, chick lit, biographies (many of them music bios), bestsellers, horror and even a few classics. I just love owning books. Some day I hope to have a house in which I have a library with wall to wall shelves (a fireplace, leather sofas and chairs, lots of wood, glass and plants) so I can have a place to keep even more books! But right now, my 2 bedroom apartment is almost overflowing and I wouldn’t have it any other way.