Book Culls

If those were my bookcases I would have books standing ( their backs against the back panel of the bookcase ) behind the books, taking up the full width of the shelves, plus a load piled on top of the case and still need room for more!
P.S. Then I would stack books laying flat on top of the shelved books to use up the vertical space between shelves, must utilise all the space you have available!!!

Ah, but these are post purge bookcases! --- And remember almost all my reading is now by ereader and the vast majority of those are Kindle Unlimited, so they do not reside long on my reader. ---- Now if my wife wouldn't keep ordering romances and filling up library with those. (sigh!) --- The worst part? Almost all my Amazon recommendations are now for stories like "The Bronco Rider's Bride." ---- Pretty good title. Maybe I should write the book?
 
Last time i tried to reduce the number of books in the house, I made a pile of about 40 that I felt I could do without. I left them on the desk, went and made a cup of tea (Earl Grey, hot), returned to the desk, sat down, and idly picked up the top volume. 2 hours later, I was half-way through it, and the day was gone. I think I eventually donated 4 of the pile to the local Age Concern shop...
 
I think the only book purging I've ever done was purging schoolbooks. The joint failure of myself and school in producing me with a clear legible writing style means that most of it was sprawl. Plus no matter what people say no - no I don't want to read my maths homework again in later life. Meanwhile things like geography were just re-hashes of the textbook :p

It made quite the fire.

Otherwise I've never really had any kind of major book purging. Perhaps the odd childrens book here and there lost/missplaced or donated along. But by and large never a big sellout of books.
 
I have gotten rid of books in the past, then later regretted it, there was an old Pan paperback of "The Road To En-Dor" (WW1 escape story ) I think it was called, wish I kept that one.
 
I don't cull very often. I buy a lot of books at yard sales and library sales, often without having ever read the book before, so most of my culling occurs after I get around to reading it if I find I don't like it enough to ever reread it.

That said, I did recently cull all of my Star Trek books. It's been years since I'd reread any of them so it was time to move them on. Got to make two elderly ladies very happy when they bought almost every single one of them at my family's annual yard sale :ROFLMAO:. One of them was about to go in for surgery and was stocking up on reading material for when she'd be laid-up.
 
Culling my books??? Never.
If it ever comes to that it's more likely they will try to cull me.
 
I don’t like to cull. Books (or ties, for some reason :D)

The last time I had a good clear out was when I moved back in 2001.
 
I don’t like to cull. Books (or ties, for some reason :D)

I share that one Rodders ! :cool:

My Neckties.jpg
 
We rarely cull books here, but I can't honestly say that we never do it. If I buy a book and never even read past the first couple of chapters because I realize that it was a big, big mistake, when one of those rare occurrences of culling comes around that book will go into the "donate to a charity or sell to a second-hand book store" pile. Since I do a lot of rereading, I am reluctant to get rid of anything if there is any chance at all that I will read it again. It doesn't have to be a favorite or a classic; if I think I might read it again I am likely to hold on to it. I'm not sure what criteria John uses for books he has bought.

Fortunately, we have never had to reduce the number of books we own by any huge amount. I would find that very, very hard. I think I would be cramming them into every available corner before I did that: under the bed and beneath the couch cushions and so forth. But our house is fairly big (although generally occupied by many people) and we have family members who are good at building things, so usually when the books are overflowing to a significant degree we just buy some wood and build more shelves.

Although even that is rarer now that John and I mostly read digital books—because we can enlarge the fonts—which don't take up room in the house. Otherwise, by now we might be running out of walls and it would be almost all bookshelves.
 
Very occasionally I get rid of books I really didn't like but its a pretty rare event. On the whole, I don't cull, I hoard. I lost a whole heap of books from my teenage years when I moved away from home and then overseas for a few years, but I have since tracked down on ebay all the SFF books I owned way back when and reacquired the exact same editions I had 32-36 years ago. So in recent times I've actually done the opposite of culling - reacquiring.
 

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