Booking Through Thursday: Weeding

This week's BTT questions about "weeding" your library are interesting because just this morning my husband and I were searching around for a few books he might take to a book sale his agency is participating in. And we couldn't find a single book to donate. You'd think that with all these books piled up everywhere – spilling off shelves and tables, out of cabinets and drawers – there'd be just one we'd want to get rid of, wouldn't you? But such is not the case, alas.

Well, actually I already donated a couple of books to the sale, earlier this month. But that's it – just two books. One was a duplicate of a Preston-Child thriller, and the other was a paperback copy of The Devil Wears Prada which I never finished reading and now have to admit I'm never gonna. Awful book. And yet it made such an entertaining movie. Go figure.

Anyway, back to the questions at hand. Do I weed? Do I pare? Do I donate or throw out? It's always tough for me to face these questions because this is a subject I have a lot of problems with. (Hello. My name is Joy and I'm a book hoarder.) I'm addicted to books – always have been. I love buying them and reading them and reading about them. I love handling them and just looking at them on the shelves. I love accumulating them, and I do that very well.

What I don't do so well is part with them. Once a book comes into my hands, it's usually mine for life. (Unless it's borrowed, of course – then I'm almost always pretty scrupulous about returning it because I know how upset I get when my own books are borrowed and not returned.) And since my hubby is also something of a book addict, we've managed to amass an enormous number of books over the years. We have boxes and boxes of books in storage because we don't have room for all of them in the apartment. I keep telling myself that one of these days we'll move into a place with a room big enough to house the entire collection.

Yes. Well, it's a nice fantasy anyway.