AIBU to replace most of the books we throw?

[OMGInShock]

We're moving soon and DH wants to cut our bookshelves to a minimum. He says we should throw all the paperbacks as no one will ever read them again.

WIBTotallyU to agree but then buy them again on my e-reader? I've a massive collection of Penguin Classics like Hardy, Collins, Dickens, Austen, Brontë etc and I get his point, we're unlikely to read them again in their current format - small print, book so not practical to stuff in a bag or read in the evening. I kind of think we should keep them for the DC but the language is quite tricky for non-native speakers so I think DC would be more likely to read them on an e-reader as there's a dictionary function.

It would feel wrong not to have the "classics" in the house!

YABU - waste of money, throw* anyway, no one will re-read.
YANBU - should always invest in books and have the classics available!

*throw as in try to pass on / donate, not recycle unless no one wants them.

So what do you do if you have to move to a smaller space? It’s a tricky question.

Hang on to the print versions. They can’t be retro ‘improved’ aka censored.

I don't think a wall of bookshelves takes up much space at all & I would ensure that I could have that in any place I lived at a minimum.

I guess it's a case of what you prioritise. I did a cull a year or so ago. Mainly crap books given as presents (looking at you mil) on subjects that meant nothing to us

But my books? Lots are rare & out of print. As someone else said, they're like photographs & are a reminder of a time.

Many are art books etc.

I won't be parted from them. I would 100% find a way to keep them & dh would 100% support that too so I know we'd be on the same page

I won't vote, because there's no right or wrong here. You have to do what suits you and your household and many people who are downsizing find that they don't have the room for actual, physical stuff that they once did. No wonder companies like Amazon and Netflix are making an absolute mint out of us! Also, the fact that you are considering whittling down your collection doesn't make you some sort of philistine. One of my friends is a huge reader, but she hardly ever buys a book. She makes the most of the local library and is in and out on a weekly basis with her latest acquisition or return. I'd trust her opinion on the latest thing in modern literary fiction over almost anyone else I know.

That said, your circumstances can change. Some years ago, DH and I got Kindles and gave a mountain of books to charity shops. Some years after that, I started an MA, then DH began his PhD, with me following soon after. I soon realised that studying literature entirely from the screen and print-outs would be a joyless experience. I use the library, but I also need a lot of my own books, so that I can pick them up, annotate them as I please and not worry about depriving anyone else. Plus, referencing from physical books is easier and seems more authoritative. Needless to say, the house is filling up with books again. . .😁

If you want to have a book clear out, you could sell them to WeBuyBooks. We recently moved, so had a bit of a purge and we got about £50 overall

Same here. 18 shelves at home and 24 at work. When we move post retirement I’m having a downstairs study big enough to house them all.

Donate them to charity and get them out of the library whenever you feel like reading them again. Most libraries will have classics at one branch or another. No point in your books sitting around unread or even purchasing in a different format.

Some people have more of an emotional attachment to books but not me (apart from the ones I used to read with my son!)

I threw out all my fiction paperbacks and slowly replaced them with kindle or at any rate done kind of ebook.

Considerable saving of storage, dusting and just being able to find everything and readily check whether I already have something in my 'library'

Brilliant.

The thing with kindle is that you don’t actually own the book, you’ e just paid for the right to read it, and they could delete it at any time.

Add them to a list on Goodreads and replace them when you want to re read them

I think that having them on a kindle instead of hard copies would have a lot of advantages in your circumstances, but personally I wouldn’t re-buy the kindle versions until someone was actively wanting to read the book in question.

I like a paper book - no e-readers for me. I also like to keep them to refer back to, sometimes i remember part of a really good book and like to be able to remember which ones I have read. I did get rid of a load when I moved in with DH as there was not the room for them all and I was so heartbroken when I couldn't see what I had read. I am building my collection back up

If they're just classics then yes I'd donate.

I don't tend to donate other books as they go out of print and are lost forever.

But also I love to read in the bath and don't want to buy a Kindle for that.

And the area I'm interested in is from the cannon of classics.

*canon

I give my paper backs away bc they get rattty looking fast and as they get older they’d be more likely to get dust mites. I don’t find the spines on paper backs nice either.

@KimberleyClark That does bother me a bit, some books are only on Kindle and we started there, but we've bought some where you can download the file so you do "own" it. I'm not sure how that works with updates though tbh.

@GreyAreas that's a good idea (be even better if I had reception in the cellar!). Maybe I'll add them to my wish list and every time I buy a new book, I'll buy one of the old ones too.

not to be silly, but wouldn't new reading glasses be cheaper than a giant stack of new hardback books?

In the US there's a charity to can donate books to the gives them to women's prisons. Maybe you could do something like that instead of throwing them out.

Nah, I read in bed and I don't want to wear glasses when I read. I'm shortsighted and have had specs since I was a kid, but even at mid 50s I can read novels without needing glasses (thank goodness).

It wouldn't be that big a stack. I had a phase in my teens when I read pretty much only 19th century novels and I really don't want to relive most of that.

I don't think I ever need to read Thomas Hardy again, and probably wouldn't reread things like Thackery, Moll Flanders, much of Dickens and some of George Elliot again (like Daniel Deronda - not a fan of that one! what on earth was thinking?)

Oh, and and the Russians - those patronymics, I never could keep them straight.

If I have Middlemarch, the Austens, North and South and a few others that occur to me as I go, I think it'll be fine.

Books are “not practical to stuff in a bag”? I’ve easily stuffed books in bags for my whole adult life, so I’m not sure what the problem is supposed to be.

If the space is available, I’d keep any books I truly enjoyed and get rid of the rest. I don’t see the point of hanging onto a personal copy of a book simply because it’s a classic. I wouldn’t download them on my e-reader, either. If your children want to read, say, Anna Karenina or Jane Eyre in ten years, it shouldn’t be difficult to find a copy.