Comments on: Which books can you never give away?

By: TheBookworm

TheBookworm — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:53:53 +0000

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…

By: Alistair Spalding

Alistair Spalding — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:55:47 +0000

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.

By: 7dollarbook.info » Stupid Blog Name » Which books can you never give away?

7dollarbook.info » Stupid Blog Name » Which books can you never give away? — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:28:59 +0000

[...] Go here to read the rest: Stupid Blog Name » Which books can you never give away? [...]

By: Carol Snow

Carol Snow — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:56:54 +0000

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?)

By: Michael Grant

Michael Grant — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:08:58 +0000

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.

By: Topics about Collectibles » Which books can you never give away?

Topics about Collectibles » Which books can you never give away? — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:35:52 +0000

[...] 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 [...]