
Happy Sunday, all!
A lot of people seem to be instituting book buying bans, or book acquiring bans, or (horrors!) even no-books-from-the-library bans. While I am not planning to do the same – I’d never be able to keep to it, and I think it would just make me cranky – I am trying to limit my acquisitions; that is, trying to pick up only wishlisted books, and letting something sit on my wishlist for a while before acquiring to be sure that I really want it. Nevertheless, my TBR pile has gotten somewhat out of control… 250 books at the moment.
So, I’m doing another purge. Not as big as the pre-move purge back in August, but I went through my shelves last night and pulled anything that I wasn’t still excited about reading and/or anything that I couldn’t remember my reasons for acquiring. Most of these were impulse buys at the Friends of the Library booksale or at the thrift store – never on any wishlist, but something I picked up, went “Oh, this looks interesting, and for a dollar, why not,” and brought home with me. Three of them (Seeing Redd, The Way of Light, and I Know This Much is True) are cases where I didn’t care for the previous book in the series/by the author, the rest are just books that no longer make me go “oh, I want to read that right now!”

- I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
- The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
- Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor
- The Way of Light by Storm Constantine |
- Jacob’s Ladder: A Novel of Virginia During the Civil War by Donald McCaig
- White Oleander by Janet Fitch
- Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
- Little Children by Tom Perrotta
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Empire Falls by Richard Russo |
I was going to ask if anyone thought that I’m making a huge mistake by getting rid of any of these books, but then I realized that I don’t want to be talked out of purging them. If I do decide in some nebulous future that I absolutely must read one of them, well, that’s what libraries are for. And in the meantime, they’re taking up room on my shelves that could be used to house more books that I’m actually excited about.
So what I will ask is: does anybody want any of these books? If so, let me know which one(s), and your bookmooch ID, and I’ll reserve it for you.
What about you, readers? Are you one of the strong and intestinally fortitudinous that have implemented a personal book ban? Or are you one of the lucky few with enough shelf space to acquire whatever the heck you want?