The Great Book Purge of 2014

[ArkTinkerer]

I am gradually weeding out in advance of RE next year. In some cases its almost like seeing the children go. I have a large number of DIY, old machinist texts, electronics circuit guides, and other rather esoteric books that are getting hard to find. The purchase and throw away society has stopped producing books like this and the few that are produced are even more specific and more expensive. The history and fiction books I don't have as big a problem letting go. The out of date electronic reference books I have been clearing out but they use to have design guides and applications notes that are very useful even today. I guess I could tear those parts out and toss the rest. I guess the dream would be to find some young upstarts that would actually use some of this that has taken me years to find, acquire, and qualify as worthwhile. May eventually be my sons but that means holding on to the books for more years!

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArkTinkerer I am gradually weeding out in advance of RE next year. In some cases its almost like seeing the children go. I have a large number of DIY, old machinist texts, electronics circuit guides, and other rather esoteric books that are getting hard to find. The purchase and throw away society has stopped producing books like this and the few that are produced are even more specific and more expensive. The history and fiction books I don't have as big a problem letting go. The out of date electronic reference books I have been clearing out but they use to have design guides and applications notes that are very useful even today. I guess I could tear those parts out and toss the rest. I guess the dream would be to find some young upstarts that would actually use some of this that has taken me years to find, acquire, and qualify as worthwhile. May eventually be my sons but that means holding on to the books for more years!

(emphasis mine) Believe me, I understand!

The last time I did a book purge was just a year after I retired, and I simply could NOT bring myself to throw out some very esoteric, stimulating, and irreplaceable oceanographic reference books. Now that I have been retired for five years, have immersed myself in retirement, and have mentally extricated myself from activities related to my former career, maybe I'll be able to get rid of them.

[martyp]

At w*rk I had a pretty extensive library of engineering, science, and photography books as well as some old college text books. When I left I was able to give them to our local town library.

I have a small home and I have been very good about purging books 1-2x per year. First I select books that I know will be accepted by the local used book store. They give me store credit for these. I take the rest of the books to our recycling center. They have a book bin and there are always people there culling the books and then taking them to sell to other books stores or at flea markets. Actually they got so aggressive that the recycling center limited the time they could be there so they wouldn't intimidate the local residents who were dropping off books.

I've got a big drawer of CD's. They have all been digitized but my wife still likes to play CD's. Someday those will go too.

[trixs]

I am fairly young (33) and find this thread interesting. While 90% of my reading is accomplished on a Kindle I still love physical books. I even attend library sales and pick up boxes of books on the cheap. Why? I would love my own library and hope my 3 month old finds inspiration to read

[sengsational]

DW is spoiled with the large font on the Kindle, so never will read small font paper books again. Still have not done too much purging, but I built massive amounts of shelf space in the attic. Some day...

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by trixs I even attend library sales and pick up boxes of books on the cheap. Why? I would love my own library and hope my 3 month old finds inspiration to read

I grew up in a home where the walls were lined with books, they were stacked on top of cabinets and sometimes overflowed to the floor.

It was great doing all that armchair exploring, stories, and learning!