our personal library
What books in your library will you never read (or read again)? Which books are there as ideals, those which surely you will read soon enough?
Then which books must you keep forever, because their words shaped your thoughts and you can't part with the molds?
These were the questions my girlfriend and I faced, looking over our personal library. We had over 300 books together and they were overflowing from our two large bookshelves.
We told each other: "We'll sort books into to sell, to read, and to keep. If either of us wants to read or keep a book, we do so no questions asked."
We took a stack of books down from the books shelf at a time, then sort it into three piles on the floor. One of us would sort then the other would check the piles to see if any book should be upgraded.
It's an odd feeling to go through your whole personal library. I lift a textbook that showed me the delight of computing. It sits near a science fiction series that shaped my dreams in middle school. My girlfriend looks over their own collection of science fiction paperbacks, which shaped their view of the world.
Then we go through all the books we may never finish, those physical reminders of our past ambitions. We sort the books with our ambitions. This one in the next year, this one is ongoing, and this one... who knows? I guess we can get rid of it for now. Dreams, which seemed like everything 10 years ago, are now riding in a box towards the nearest used book store on this breezy summer day. For sale, used dreams, never read.
We ended up getting rid of half of our books. Of the remaining half (about 160 books), we set aside half of the books to read in the next few years and half of the books to keep forever. In our bookshelf, there are two shelves "to read" and two shelves "to keep".
Dramatic flair aside, it is helpful to focus on a smaller set of books to actually read. Hopefully I can actually finish these books!