Ah, it feels good to be writing casually again. As some may know, I recently gave the Kindle for iPhone app a spin. I bought the latest book from Lincoln Child - Terminal Freeze - and I finished reading it on the iPhone last week. It actually is the first book I’ve finished in over a year. The reason I was finally able to start and finish a book is because when the book is on the iPhone, it’s with you all the time. I was able to sneak a page here and there and almost everywhere until at last, there were no more pages. It was a bit different and I suspect the actual Amazon Kindle device would be a better experience but the simple fact is, I was able to finish a book because it was in electronic format on my phone.
Today I was in my basement where I have the monster homemade bookcase that acts as my everlasting archive of tomes once bought and perhaps read. As I was looking at this collection of over 1,000 books, I realized that the vast majority of them are over 10 years old and some over 20 years old. There are plenty which are even showing that age, getting musty and yellowed. So I decided to start culling my flock.
My books fall into several tags:
Books which I never read.
Books which I read and didn’t care for.
Books which I read and loved and are available at Amazon anytime.
Books which I read and loved and are unavailable.
Books which hold some sentimental value, i.e. the Amiga System Programmer’s Guide!
The culling will go like this:
Books in categories 1 and 2 will be noted and donated to the library or given to a used bookseller.
Books in category 3 will mostly be noted and donated or given. However, a few favorites will be kept around, just in case :-)
Books in categories 4 and 5 will remain, albeit with more shelf space.
Note that all of this applies only to paperback books. So far, I don’t feel the need to eliminate any of my hardbacks, of which most are college textbooks and other similar books or references.