Which books can you never give away?
Hello, old friends. Long time no write. I’m moving; I’ve shut YA New York up for awhile so I can do some revamping (and also some moving), and I have a bone to pick about books.
You see, I have a lot of books. So far I have packed up about ten boxes to keep, given away two boxes, and set aside what looks to be another two to four boxes to give away.
I’ve even thrown away — recycled — a few that had fallen into the bathtub one time too many.
But it’s hard to choose what to keep and what to part with. As a reviewer, I get tons of books. Tons. Some are completely inappropriate for YA New York — picture books for small children, adult romance novels for some reason — and others are books I didn’t find worthy of review.
Then there are the books I did like, and did review. Do I keep them? If I do, I will soon collect so many books that no apartment is big enough to hold them all.
So I use a system. Will this book have a sequel? If yes, keep. Is this book or book series iconic? If yes, keep. What if I don’t like this series? Keep it anyway. What if I feel I’ve gotten all I need from this series? Keep the first book. (Examples:Lemony Snicket, which is tween lit and not really my area of expertise, Gossip Girl: the original series, which I’ve committed to memory though I can’t say I loved every one of the books. My YA LA correspondent should, of course, own every Gossip Girl book, because one of these days she’s going to have to write some TV pieces about the whole thing.)
But what else determines whether I’ll keep something? It feels like a sin to throw away a book … and not just that second copy of the The Book of Mormon, a duplicate gift from the boyfriend’s parents. No, anything that someone has put time and effort into feels like a living being to me.
Still, the idea that I’ll give this book away, and maybe it will circulate, and a few new people will pick it up from the library or the Salvation Army or wherever else books end up, is something that makes me feel better. My galleys of Alma Alexander’s books will live on, and I get to keep the nice hardcover copies for myself. Those books I never reviewed and never will? They too may find an audience. (And some of those books, by the by, are books I meant to review and never got around to. Which is why I’ll be restarting some sort of catchup review thing over at my site, when things get going again.)
But I want to ask all of you, especially Mr. Michael Grant, what you do with your books when you move? Other reviewers, how do you deal with all the books you receive?
In spite of it all, there are always too many books I can never part with — I’m looking at you, Ms. Cabot, with a little bit of resentment because I absolutely must keep every one of your books, always. Books by people I care about, or books about things I care about, or books that are one of a kind, or books I want to study and compare to other books, or books I just want to hug and love forever because they’re so good.
My boyfriend, by the way? Is totally annoyed by how many books I insist on lugging along with me to our new apartment. We’ve been keeping books in a closet for the last year or so, and now we’ve got to buy yet another bookcase.
Tags: givingawaybooks
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 am by Sabrina Banes and is filed under world. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
[...] Stupid Blog Name created an interesting post today on Which books can you never give away?Here’s a short outlineHello, old friends. Long time no write. I’m moving; I’ve shut YA New York up for awhile so I can do some revamping (and also some moving), and I have a bone to pick about books. You see, I have a lot of books. So far I have packed up about ten boxes to keep, given away two boxes, and set aside what looks to be another two to four boxes to give away. I’ve even thrown away — recycled — a few that had fallen into the bathtub one time too many. But it’s hard to choose what to keep and what to [...]
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:08 pm
When we moved to Italy we attritted something like 60 boxes of books. Yes, 60. I took pictures for the IRS. I sent some Civil War books to a blog buddy of mine. The rest we have to the Chapel Hill library.
Out: books bought as research on projects already completed or abandoned. A ton of animal books from ANIMORPHS days. Horse books from SILVER CREEK RIDER days. Civil War history from some series I was going to write (until I realized, wait a minute, why am I doing research when I can just make stuff up?) Katherine in particular buys more books than she can conceivably read. She spent more on research for HOME OF THE BRAVE than she was paid for the book. (I exaggerate, but not much.) Also we tossed out a lot of foreign translations of books we’ve written. I don’t read Indonesian, and if I did, I would not read ANIMORPHS again.
What did I save? Patrick O’Brien. Tolkien. Raymond Chandler. Lehane. King. Mosely. A lot of history. But mostly my “escape” books. When life gets bad I run away to the Surprise with Aubrey and Maturin, or go back to Middle Earth.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Michael: I just looked up “attritted” to see if it was actually a word. It is. Kudos.
Re: books — weirdly, the more I write (and the more author copies that clutter my shelves), the less attached I get to books I’ve already read. If I like a book, I want to pass it along. If I don’t, I don’t mind donating it. (Why, then, are my bookshelves still so full?)
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 am
[...] Go here to read the rest: Stupid Blog Name » Which books can you never give away? [...]
March 26th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I used to pick up all kind of free books when I was working at the head office of Borders. Anything I picked up for free I’ll probably pass on for free to a friend of charity bookstores (oxfam stores in the UK are great).
The ‘top shelf’ of my bookcase contains the books I love more than anything. I won’t give those away to anyone, ever. It’s also the section of my bookself that I would be ‘most likely to rescue’ if the apartment was on fire and I’d already rescued my wife, my computer, and my passport.
I would rather give a book than loan one. If I give it I can mentally write it off as gone, but if it’s a loan then I spend the rest of my days hopeful that the person might return it (even though they never do). Current example of this: Catch 22, Joseph Heller. Man I miss that book. Steve! Give it back.
March 27th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I am too selfish to even think about parting with my books. I love books, and not ashamed to let my books pour out of the shelves.
The problem is when I try to get rid of books I didn’t like, even old battered ARCs. I have only ever thrown one book away, and it still haunts me today. If I didn’t like a book and/or it has inappropriate sexual content included there is no way that I can give it to the library. And Paperbackswap unfortunately doesn’t accept ARCs. So I end up selling all my unwanted books for fraction of the price on Ebay and garage sales. I then use the money I get for those to buy books that I really want to read and keep.
So, I have decided that to remedy my unending addiction to books I’m going to… leave all my books to my family and local library in my will. They can do whatever they want with them when I’m gone, but until then I’m not going to let anybody pry them out of my hands! … I’m going to need a lot more bookshelves…