The Great Book Purge

Let me be clear from the start—this blog post isn’t about someone saying which books you should or shouldn’t read. It’s a short story about downsizing books and reckoning with my family’s obsession with printed copies. Normally, I would say this is a good problem for an author to have, but then you haven’t seen my house with its 13 shelves of books.

That shouldn’t be a shocking number except I actually do not live in a house with a separate room for a library. No, these shelves are scattered around our house, mostly in our finished basement, where I have an office. And these are not your short or narrow shelves with a few stacks of books artfully placed here and there. These are almost all floor to ceiling monsters packed top to bottom with books.

We have theological and seminary books (my husband has a master of arts in religion and we’re Presbyterians, so yeah, lots of books about God and the Bible). We have books about films and movies (again, I’m throwing my husband under the bus as a former film critic and film major in undergrad). We have parenting books (okay, this is me) and books about jazz (yep, my husband again!). Then there’s the mystery/suspense/thriller books (my jam), history books (me again), general fiction (both of us), and books I’ve written (this is a growing number!). Those books constitute about 50 percent of the shelves.

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Roughly 40 percent of our collection are children’s books. We have picture books, early readers, middle grade, and teen/young adult titles on our shelves. These are books we bought for our four kids, books they received as gifts, and books I brought from my childhood (my parents arrived with boxes of mostly books a few weeks after we moved into our house). Our children’s library rivaled the public one, allowing our kids (and sometimes their friends) with hours of enjoyment.

And we’re still adding to our collection, although we do purge one or two old titles when we bring in new, but still our shelves are packed! Something’s gotta give, and so this summer, my husband and I will embark on The Great Book Purge. We plan to systemically go through our shelves to select books that have been neglected in the hopes of giving them new life on someone else’s TBR list.

Why now? For a few reasons. First, our kids are now all young adults, so the majority of the children’s books are no longer being read—and books deserve to be read! Second, I’m embarking on a new career as a fourth-grade teacher this coming school year and would love to take some of our books for my classroom library. Third, we are out of shelf space. Bonus reason is that we’ll actually know what books we have and can spend some time organizing the shelves so we can find books in the future. Nothing’s more frustrating that knowing you have a particular book but can’t find it.

So next week, The Hamaker Great Book Purge will begin, one that will lighten our shelves and allow us to rediscover old favorites and maybe meet some new ones we hadn’t realized we had.

How do you handle overflowing bookshelves?

 

 

 

Multi-award-winning and best-selling author of inspirational romantic suspense, Sarah Hamaker loves writing books “where the hero and heroine fall in love while running for their lives.” She’s an AWSA certified writer and speaker coach, and podcaster of “The Romantic Side of Suspense.” Sarah lives in Virginia with her husband, four young adult children and two cats.