maina, glad you have at last found this site; better late than never! You'll find a wide range of book choices here and quite often subjects that have only a thin link to books. So do jump in and join the chat.

Welcome, Malna.
I prefer hard covers or the larger paperbacks as they open better. Some paperbacks fall to pieces if they are pulled wide open and some are getting so small and have tiny print.
I now borrow large print if that is the only copy in the library although my eyes used to water reading them when my sight was better. Unfortunately I am developing cataracts and need more magnification in the lenses every year.

I had to cull my bookcases when my husband died and I gave them to a charity whose volunteer worker loved Sci-Fi and said he would like to read some of them before putting them on sale. He bought some signed books we had.

I have had to cull books a lot as we moved around and it is like parting from friends!

It is so good to have some new people join as we have lost a few over the years and I hope that all "RP'ers" as we call ourselves have made the adjustment to Houzz.

Malna, welcome. I, too, am familiar with culling my beloved books, as I had to relocate almost 5 years ago and give up a big house. I still miss many of the books I had to part with, as they were like familiar friends. Now, bookshelves fill quite a lot of the space in my small apartment. I use the nearby college library, the public library, and am lucky to have a bookmobile that comes every two weeks to our building.

We here at RP are quite eclectic in our reading tastes, and very tolerant of our differences in opinions. People in my building keep urging me to join a "real" book discussion group, but I am quite happy with just RP for the time being.

Glad to have you join us!

I cull my books on a regular basis, as does my DH. We donate about 100 books to the local Friends of the Library book sale each year. And another 100 comes right in to replace them, alas.....

Welcome to RP. I have not yet come to culling books and am sure it will feel like giving away my children.

We moved five years ago, and my husband moved boxes and boxes of books in the back of his car to lessen the movers' charges and then built me floor-to-ceiling bookshelves across the end of the living room in addition to one on each side of the fireplace in the den. That's in addition to three freestanding bookcases scattered around the house. They are now all almost full, and I feel like I do most of my reading from the public library. I suspect the books of multiplying at night in the dark.

Welcome Malna, glad to have you with us, I hope you enjoy RP!

Welcome Maina, I culled all my book several years ago with the advent of kindles. Of course I kept some I couldn't bear to part with, but for the most part our local library was a huge beneficiary. Now if I could just get my DH to cull his books....sigh.....

Pat

Oh, we have well in excess of 200 running feet of books on our shelves. I prefer physical books to ebooks, and I like have my favorites in my possession. When I say that I cull my books, I don't mean that I'm getting rid of them wholesale. It means that I am being selective about what I keep.

Those local libraries often have wonderful used bookstores where I can now buy all those cookbooks for a dollar or two that I would have felt were a splurge at full price. I find young moms really enjoy having me pass along an extra copy of the Joy of Cooking or a Julia Child tome. Or even a vintage BH&G or Betty Crocker spiral bound copy. And pregnancy and child care books, such as What to expect when you are expecting are great donations for new moms who visit low income childcare or pregnancy centers. Could be any topic. Religious education is another favorite of mine. Local soup kitchens love to receive gently used Bibles for their patrons.

Welcome to RP Malna; it's great to meet another book lover.

I am another who loves to re-read old favorites. I consider my books to be good friends worth visiting when the mood hits.

Unlike the others, I have great difficulty culling books since I only buy them if I really want them. I do utilize the library a lot; I can borrow a book first and then decide if I like it enough to buy a hardcover copy. That way I am able to control how crowded the bookcases get...in theory, at least!

Welcome to RP. Reading shampoo bottles? Yikes... you need to keep a book in the bath. And one in the kitchen so you do not get stuck reading cereal boxes, too.

PAM

Don't do what I did and drop a library book in the bath! Luckily I fished it out quickly. It had a plastic cover over the jacket and to my surprise even the edges of the pages had kept dry. At what the library charges for a replacement book which is about double the price to allow for the processing back into the system, I was very relieved.

I had to replace a library book once when I left their copy on an airplane. I was astounded at the price and wondered what would have happened if I had just bought a replacement for them.

Carolyn, the library system where I worked would not accept a replacement copy. A new book would be purchased and would go to Accessions to be processed into the system. That is why the extra money is charged on top of the book cost, I was told when I queried this.
I regularly borrow books loaned to my library from other libraries and there is a very prominent form attached, warning that a charge of $55 (Australian) will be made if the loan is not returned.
It concentrates my mind wonderfully to read and take back the item quickly!

Well, I certainly will be careful with library books when I run out of in-house books to read! This winter produced some unforeseen water where-it's-NOT-supposed-to-be in the bathroom. So the books normally residing there were whisked to a safe refuge!

I unearthed my Kindle (I had forgotten about it - I like it but just not the same as paper) but couldn't find the cable. Woohoo, found the cable rooting around in stuff this weekend, so I might see if it still fires up. There are some on there that I don't have in print.

It's been a strange journey. I've read quite a few books in the last two weeks. A few I really used to like. After reading I thought "Why did I EVER think this was a good book?" Perhaps it was because I just wasn't in the mood for the genre, so naturally I had to save those for a re-re-re-read (yeah, I know...)

A few I thought I wouldn't like, I ended up enjoying quite a bit. So not very many (I think I'm up to two ;-) have gone to the "Free to Good Home" box. I'll do better.

Some that I've read:
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
American Mosaic by Joan Morrison and Charlotte Zabusky
Gad's Hall by Norah Lofts
A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett
The Du Mauriers by Daphne du Maurier (I have no idea how I ended up with a 1937 copy of this book, but I promised myself to read EVERY book in the house.)
Void Moon by Michael Connolly
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Looking back at that list, I sure made a lot of movies in my mind from quite an odd lot of books (a couple of the Hollywood movies were pretty good, though). It's been fun, and I think it will continue to be.

Thank you all for the warm welcome, and it's nice to be able to post a bizarre list of books!

Tee hee, Maina. Aren't most book lists bizarre?

I'm reading The Back Road by Rachel Abbott and finding it very compelling. (Mysteries are my favorite.) My library doesn't have her first book, so I may have to see if I can find a used copy on line.

Carolyn, Rachel Abbott has become one of my 'new' favorite authors. I am one that does not like reading a series out of order and have been fortunate to get then all at a low price for the kindle. When I get a book that is not the first in a series I hang on to it until I can get them in order-it is one of my 'musts'. I am just starting her book Stranger Child.

I just finished a library book The Wolf in Winter by Michael Connolly, I really don't care much for most library books as most seem to either have food remnants on some pages (yuk) or my pet peeve of corners turned down to mark a place, this book in particular had a lot of corners turned down.

Pat

Pat, my library only has the one Abbott book. I have ordered the first one from Abe Books; my e-reader is not a Kindle so I'm further limited in purchases.

good tip on chopsticks book, found an interview, delightful.

Carolyn, the cost of processing a book - that is, getting it into the system - often approaches the cost of purchasing a new book, and sometimes even surpasses it. If the library charged you a sum that astonished you, it was probably the cost of processing that did it.

That's what they told me, Rose, but they have accepted my donations without a murmur.

Donations to my local library are put into the quarterly Book Sale. They don't accession them but use the proceeds to buy new books.

Hi all! I've been poking around in RP - somehow I missed out on it before Houzz. I thought I would just jump in on this conversation.

I have had to limit myself to only keeping books that I know I will re-read. I rarely get to buy them new, so most of the books I buy at library bookstores and nowadays online shopping for used books is very helpful. Many books I am trying to find are out of print, and eventually library copies are so well-loved that they are withdrawn and can't be replaced.....I am not a fan of ebooks (much prefer the physical for many reasons) but I notice that some out of print books are showing up as ebook editions.

I work in a library, and have a few library cards, so I can tell you from personal experience that all libraries do not have the same policies. In our county system, we have to buy from a specific vendor, and the books are mostly processed when we receive them. We just do a couple of small things before they are on the shelf, and that factors into to the higher replacement cost. The processing fee is a separate thing and varies by item type. Once we did accept replacements but they had to have the same ISBN among other criteria, and it was just easier to switch to a charge.

As an aside, only a few weeks into my working at the library, someone gave me such a wonderful site : www. fantasticfiction.co.uk. I use and recommend it constantly, it is invaluable to those of us who want to read series in order.

Dawn

Welcome, it is good to have new RP'ers!
As I mostly read mysteries I get my recommendations from the Stopyourkillingme site. They give monthly updates of new publications as well as reviews and Awards news.

Welcome, Dawn. I'm another former library worker, both public and private. I still miss getting the first crack at the new books as they were delivered to the library. We also, as employees, used to get discounts from B & T if we ordered books for our personal use.

Hi Malna! I smiled when I read your first post because I did the same thing when we thought we would move house (never happened) and went through our books, dividing them into "definitely keep", "definitely give away" and "not sure". All the "not sures" I re-read first to decide where to put them. I found a number of duplicates (DH and I have similar tastes) and a surprising number of "who the heck bought this?" as neither DH nor I recognised them, and they were not books to our taste...

Hi, Colleenoz,
How are things Down Under? I remember you from other forums!

I also had a lot of "who the heck bought this?" books. Then I finally figured out that my stepmom, my sister, my SIL, my niece, etc. were purging their books and gave them to us!

I came across The Poetry of Robert Frost and along with it was a set of cassette tapes of Robert Frost reading his poetry (recorded in the early 1950's). Yes, I still have a cassette player! I really do need to transfer the cassettes to CD's, though. I thoroughly enjoyed reading along while listening to not only the words, but the cadence and intonations in his voice. Fun poetry night :-)

Just now downloaded a Rachel Abbott, Maina. Thank you and Pat for the mention. I've been reading a ton of fluffy mysteries and I'm more than ready for something edgier.

I culled like crazy before moving (and towards the end found $200 stuffed in a never used cookbook and wondered how many of my already donated books had been likewise endowed. Totally forgotten I once amused myself that way.) Still moved boxes and boxes of books. Except for a few comfort novels, they now reside in a storage unit.