I still have in my possession just about every book that I have ever brought been given or owned. It's been for a very very long time an intrinsic part of how I see myself. Other people have cats, some collect handbags and shoes, with me its books, however truth be told I've been reading less and less these days, and most of the new ones purchased from the charity shops have gone unread. i'm at the time of life where I begrudge time given to a bad book or ones i don't enjoy. Even though I am buying fewer books, even with one or two every couple of months my shelves are creaking at the seams. So its off to the charity shop for what I estimate to be about a third of my fiction collection.
I thought I'd be able to find the will and courage to discard more, but more than just stories, which can be borrowed from the library or found online now, i find the sentimental value of the books to be more than the words inside, seeing again the first books I owned brought some thirty plus years ago now, the series built up over the decades, the books that were with me at different points in my life, remembering as a child visiting fantastical lands and strange planets. All the books that give me joy and pleasure fill two shelves now, another three shelves are of books I will let go of in time, and I have one shelf of books enjoying a temporary reprieve, to be read one more time before disposal.
Amongst the first to go though are a wall of Tom Clancy war thrillers and his ilk, I found no joy or pleasure in the their continued ownership, nor the will to reas them again. I know at one time i enjoyed these books, that i loved them as I love all my books, but the world has changed. it was one thing reading about America's war machine in the early to mid 90s. Its another to read those books in a world that has experienced the horror of real war. I had thought to delay the disposal of some of my books by auctioning them on ebay, but I guess other readers have the same view of Clancyesque books as I do, there was page after page of ebay results with zero bids.
I've noticed it before in the charity shops, all of a sudden you see the sudden arrival of a flock of similar books. Someone is moving and cannot take their books with them, is getting married and needs the space, has handed in their starfleet commissions and no longer need their Star Trek novels.
