Bookcase with NO deletes

For whatever reason, I’ve been on a bit of a cleaning bender as of late – An Autumn Cleaning – in my home office (books, computers, stereo, plants, and pics on the wall).

Which is long overdue.

As part of this cleanse, I’ve been getting rid of a bunch of books – tossing and giving away.

The books I’m shedding primarily fall into one of three categories:

• Computer books: I’ve purchased – and used – a lot of computer books in my day. I first got into computers, beyond HS/college programming classes, in the mid-90s, as the internet (pre-web) was becoming available. But today, well, there’s this thing called the InterToobs, and it’s like a book of everything, with a really great index. Some computer books seem to be worth hanging onto (solid book back in the day), why would a book on Visual Basic v5 be worth hanging onto if Visual Basic is now way past v6? Sentimental reasons only, and I have hung onto a bunch of computer books for sentimental reasons. Additionally, there are comp books (Learning Perl, 2nd edition, forward by by Larry Wall) that I know so well that they sometimes beat a web search. Rare, but a handful (the O’Reilly/animal books predominate) are useful analog references to this day. NOTE: I have documented and recycled these books. Nice to see what I had (just for fun), but no on would really want these.
• Reference books: As with computer books, in the age of the internet, reference books are somewhat dated. Does anyone really need decades-old AP style manuals, or a 1993 or 1996 World Almanac? Didn’t think so. NOTE: I have documented and recycled these books. Nice to see what I had (just for fun), but no on would really want these.
• Everything else: I haven’t documented these, as who really needs a picture of a paperback version (or two) of The World According to Garp? These are books that I’ll try to give away, because others may want them: Poetry collections, novels, short story collections. Also non-fiction tomes about model railroading (I was a fan) and other books on history/geography that seemed interesting at the time, but no longer (for me – but maybe book gold to someone else).

  A lot of the fiction I’m giving away are titles of which, for whatever reason, I have multiple copies. For example: I have multiple copies of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim – part of paperback collection of Conrad’s works, a solo soft cover, and a Modern Library hard cover (I kept the latter). What can I say? I’ve been a bit of a book whore since my early teens and I’m not getting any younger…

Where does this leave me?

Well, I still have way more books than the average bear. Once I finish this particular purge and have my shelves organized (as well as they will ever be), the impression my office will leave on folks is: Lots of computer equipment, a crapload of books.

And they would not be wrong. (Refer back to my book whore comment.)

And I have not – and will not – touch my photo book collection. Well, there are a couple that might go, but I’m happy with my photo books (and that bookcase of stuff is in the living room, not part of the office clutter).

I will always have too many books.

He gripped more closely the essential prose
As being, in a world so falsified,
The one integrity for him, the one
Discovery still possible to make,
To which all poems were incident, unless
That prose should wear a poem’s guise at last

— Wallace Stevens