Sorting Books for our Library

Yes, we have lots of books. 

The other night I sat down and sorted these piles and placed them on the bookshelves I built. Unfortunately, I miscalculated how many shelves I would need, so now I need to make a few more shelves before I can show you how it all turned out. I can't wait- I love how it's turned out!

As I sorted and organized, I also culled. Turns out that when you can't see all the books you have, you sometimes end up with more than one copy of the same book. Who knew? 

In fact, there's one book that we have three copies of. I'm really not sure how that happened.

While I pulled out duplicates, I also pulled out books that, for one reason or another, we didn't need to keep. Some questions I asked myself:

When was the last time one of us read this book?

Will we read it again anytime soon?

Can we get it from the library?

If we hadn't read it in a long time, weren't likely to read it again, and we could easily get it from the library if we did want to read it, it went in the discard pile. As I sorted, I noticed a trend: the fiction books we did keep tended to be books written by the same authors (series or otherwise).  Some are contemporary authors, but I also have several favorite authors that are out of print and hard to find at our library, so over the years I've bought most of their books on ebay.

I kept most of our nonfiction books, with the notable exceptions being duplicate Japanese dictionaries from our time at language school, several cookbooks that I'll never be able to use given their gluten content, and my old vet tech books from college. Yes, I graduated more than 10 years ago and still had some of my textbooks.

About 300-odd books that we won't be keeping.

I listed about 200 books on paperbackswap.com. This is my first time using it, but I've heard really good things about it. Basically you list books you don't want, and others list books they do want. When those lists match up, you send your book to the person who wants it. You pay the shipping, and in return you get a credit to request a book from someone else (they pay the shipping to send it to you). Within 24 hours I had 36 books requested and 14 more books waiting to be confirmed by the people who had placed them on their lists.

I'm sure I'll only have sporadic match-ups from here on out, but it was nice to get rid of a bunch of books at once (even if it was a bit pricey to ship 36 books, even by media mail). Sending 36 books gives me 36 credits that I can use to get books (1 credit= 1 book, 2 credits= 1 audiobook), plus you get 2 credits when you list your first book, so I have 38 credits available. Now I just have to wait for the books I want to be listed. And make more room on the shelves....

Some of the books weren't in good enough condition to be listed on paperbackswap.com, so I'll be dropping them off at Goodwill.

Right now the shelves are pretty full, so I'm going to have to sort and cull again to make room for new books. I love buying new (or used) books, but it's hard to let them go.

I've also determined to be a bit more choosey about the books we purchase and keep, especially children's books. Some of our children's books had been purchased in bulk lots off ebay, so I didn't get a chance to vet them beforehand. As LMS has read them, though, I've realized that some of them were definitely twaddle and not worth keeping. And I'll be the first to admit that some of our novels are twaddle as well (don't judge me to harshly!). But it's easier to recognize that as an adult than as a child.

Do you somehow end up with twaddle on your shelves too?