I moved many times in my 20s, and still cringe at the number of book boxes I had. It took me a while to realize that while I loved having books around me, I didn't need them all. So I do the same thing - usually purging books that I either didn't care for, or know for certain I am never going to read. I take them to my local used bookstore to trade in for books I want. Keeps my shelves from being too overloaded, and makes me priotize what I have.

I do refuse however to give up my mass paperback collection of sci fi fantasy. That was my genre of choice in my 20s, and I have great memories of reading those. They are in boxes, but they aren't going anywhere.

Brave woman, Paula. I can never manage more than 2 bagfuls at a time myself. And I'm still accumulating garden books.

And Cindy, all the science fiction I bought in my 20s are now crumbling to pieces. Guess there was a reason it was called pulp fiction.

I'm really good about selling my books. There are such great used book store here and I always want more books. But it's the cooking magazines that overwhelm me. Can't sell them and no one wants them and there are such good ideas in them. When i remodeled the kitchen years and years went. now I try to get rid of everything except the last 2 years.

Up until recently, I've just been using the "time to buy another bookcase" technique.

But a week ago, I went down to our local furniture charity shop to donate a mattress which we don't have a use for. While I was there, I just had a quick glance round. Fatal ! Saw a nice bookcase for twenty quid which I just couldn't resist. When I got it home, I discovered that I couldn't fit in in the house anywhere....

It's going to replace one of my tattier bookcases, and it's slightly bigger, so I've gained a nicer bookcase and a little more space, but it's beginning to look as if I'm going to have to bow to the inevitable and get rid of some books after all.

Ah.... I applaud all of you. What fortitude, what focus, what enviable strength.

I keep 'em all. (Except for some mass market pb's that tend to yellow quickly and fall apart.)

And they are everywhere.

My daughter (9) is just like me. And my son is also showing signs of book love. We went to the friends of the library sale and brought home 62 books. They'll fit... somewhere.

Martin, congrats on the new bookcase. What a great find. I'd be converting an attic or basement or adding a room before I attempted giving away books. In fact, we are converting the basement and fully one third will be a library - a space about 12 x 24. I can't wait. But still, I do admire, deeply admire, those of you who can clean house. It is a gift.

PAM

Pam - I already had the loft converted, we don't have a basement, and there's no more space for an extension....I can't see an alternative, painful though it is, to getting rid of some books.

whimper...

Rosefolly, I admire your will power. I wish I had a dose of it. I have tried to force myself to weed out my books but made very little headway, mostly because of the memories attached to even the rattiest Penguin paperback, bought in the Sixties in London or Paris, for example. But I must force myself to do better.

Magazines are equally a problem for me, as I adore the old copies I have of both the Smithsonian and National Geographic. I know what granjan means about gourmet cooking magazines, especially those from overseas. I simply must take a deep breath and heave those boxes of old mags out to the garbage can. One of these days....

> all the science fiction I bought in my 20s are now crumbling to pieces. Guess there was a reason it was called pulp fiction

HA! Surprisingly mine aren't, but then I haven't opened them in decades. They might just all disintergrate if I do that

Wood, same problem. We finally tossed 10 years worth of National Geographics. Broke my heart - but honestly when was I going to look at them again? Same thing with Smithsonian tho I am not quite a stickler for keeping them anymore. I do get the New Yorker which thank goodness my used bookstore takes in trade.

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I have done two major culls? cullings? And bitterly regret both, especially the one about five years ago. I culled about 400 books, mostly non-fiction history and biography (my preferred reading). Donated them to the library book sale.

I cannot tell you how often I have gone for a book to check something--and it is gone. Or I have thought fondly of a book that was important at some stage of my life--and it is gone.

I have run out of space, like the rest of you. Or I could become one of those hoarders you read about in the paper. But I am so sorry I did it. I don't know what the answer to this problem is for booklovers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

There, there, Martin. All will be well, I hope. Can you squeeze a shelf or two above a doorframe? Graduated shelving along the staircase? Stack'em in-between the stair rail posts? Precariously balanced above the TV? Artfully piled beneath the sofas? Tied beneath chairs? (Kidding on that one, kinda) Shelving above windows? My poor long-suffering non-reading husband. Ah well, my mother warned him.

I wish we had a sort of RP library where we could gather our not unloved, but temporaily orphaned books. It would have, of course, a separate dormitory wing so we could visit them and stay and read. And a banqueting room so we could enjoy a real party.

PAM

Martin, I've found that one doesn't acutally need all that space on the stairs for climbing. I can fit 4-5 books on each step. Although right now I have the first 6 steps to the attic covered side to side and piled high. ;D

The only reading material I have ever given away was once in my 'youth' a pile of children's paper backs, which I soon regretted, and not so long ago several years-worth of National Geog mags which went to a 'jumble sale'.
I think so many of my books are not just about 'reading', but, as many of you have said about memories, often where I was when I read something even though the 'story' may have made little impression on me.
I had a problem not so long ago when I bought a load of books at a closing-down-sale at a local shop. I thought they would make good presents for family and friends. But where to store/hide them until birthdays/Christmas?
They are now sitting on various high book shelves as I know no-one will think of looking for them in such an obvious place.

baskets. baskets of books look nice under chairs, on the edge of steps, under the dining room table (as long as the table is wide enough to allow foot room-mine's square) in unfilled corners, beside the rocker, under the cat, covered with a pillow and serving as a hassock...there's no end to the possibilities.

And my eternal favorite, which I posted here before-narrow depth, full bookshelves along exterior exposed walls are actually good insulation and SHOULD be worthy of an energy-use-reduction tax credit.
The hard thing about culling is that after I work so hard to acquire "the entire set" of an author, like Thirkell, J.J. Marric or the Grace Harlow, College Girl series written in 1920s, or a comprehensive nonfiction set of resources-Tudor England, for instance-so I can't then give them away after all the searching and $$$! So the paperbacks are the only thing with which I can part on a regular basis. Paperbackswap has helped me narrow down the collection by 10-as I've mailed 10 more than I've received...but those credits do beckon...My books are listed in the will-heirs have first choice, then the library.

I recently bagged up several Robert Ludlum books and some cookbooks I hated and took them to a used book store. I had enjoyed the first couple of Ludlums and kept buying more to try to recapture the moment. Finally, the way he kept italicizing every other word or phrase began to drive me absolutely insane, so I gave up on him. Still had the books, though, so I sold him down the river.

I find it very hard to part with any book. I have an old paperback copy of From Here to Eternity that I started to re-read when I found out there were two more war books that followed it, but mine had developed such crispy brown pages that I checked a copy out from the library.

By the way, we changed our minds about moving, so I'm back to the small house, where to put the books, dilemna. I hadn't thought of the stairs! And I do have some furniture I could put baskets under. You all are great.

I have a 'read and rid' policy that has served me well: If I don't want to read it again, I get rid of it. The problem is that I accumulate books faster than I read them, so my TBR just keeps getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger still.

The TBR books are beginning to spill into my 'keeper' room, which is not good. I may have to do a cull, but deciding what to get rid of unread is a headache I'm not quite ready to face right now.

The truth is that I only got rid of about 10% of my books, and that a few years from now I'll do it all over again. I do this every 4 or 5 years.

Books, alas, are not the only things I tend to pile up. While I am not remotely a fan of bare-space, minimalist decorating, neither am I fond of clutter. I'm too easily confused by environmental disorder. So either I must discipline myself to ONLY buy keepers, and borrow the rest from the library, or I'll have to do through and sort every now and then.

My next task is to get the pictures all in albums...

Paula

>baskets. baskets of books look nice under chairs, on the edge of steps, under the dining room table ...

Read this and thought of a novel (hee) idea - hanging baskets! We hang pots and such, So why not books? In fact - a system of pulleys could work so you have several baskets with books organized how you want and then you just use the rope to bring that basket down. Mmmm. This just might work...

I've found that one doesn't acutally need all that space on the stairs for climbing. I can fit 4-5 books on each step.

Chris, and then if you used 1x4 boards, you could cantilever out over the lower stairs, from each of the higher ones...each board longer than the previous. On my 13 step stair case, that would give me 13 shelves on the bottom stair!

the ceiling is definitely underutilized as storage space. The hanging basket idea has real potential-as you said, look at how the pot-rack phenomenon has exploded in fashionable kitchens. There is also the telescoping shelves, suspended by chains-let down the shelves to full length and make your choice, then haul it up again and the dead space between shelves disappears, lifting the whole kit and caboodle up at least 4 feet.