What do you do with your books?

[Hugo]

Once you have finished reading a book what do you tend to do with it? Do you recommend it to a friend and give it to them, donate it to a charity shop or keep it?

I am very haphazard with books I've read, some I keep, some I give away and I don't have any real rhyme or reason in my methods.

I've always considered giving away a good book as a sound thing to do so that it is more widely read but then I have an element of regret that I could have kept it. I've flirted with the idea of building up an impressive library then can't fully see the point given that I rarely read books twice anyway, they will probably just gather dust. Its a conundrum.

[stemoc]

i used to give my books away to ppl who wanted to read them but then i realised they didn't give a shit about it, and some came back torn and pages missing, so i put them all in a box and have kept them for 2 decades... including comics...i'd rather burn them myself 5-10 years from now then let ppl treat it like toilet paper especially since i collected money from primary school to buy each of them....

[Enzedder]

Red Cross or Lions Club

Well, used to. Kindle now

[Glaston]

In days of yore, you would take them to the local 2nd hand book store and get some money back.
and then buy a shit load more.

Nowadays they are in boxes in the loft, all getting quite old and dated.
Due to the cost of books I dont buy even 5% of the number I bought in the 70's/80's.

Dont do Kindle.


When clearing my mothers house I took 2 boxes to the local library

[assfly]

I keep mine. But all of my books are either history or current affairs books which I continually refer back to.

[stemoc]

In days of yore, you would take them to the local 2nd hand book store and get some money back.
and then buy a shit load more.

Nowadays they are in boxes in the loft, all getting quite old and dated.
Due to the cost of books I dont buy even 5% of the number I bought in the 70's/80's.

Dont do Kindle.


When clearing my mothers house I took 2 boxes to the local library

did u atleast take out ur Playboy magazines before donating them? :P

[average joe]

Trow them all on a big pile and burn them while I sing deutschland uber alles.

[Chrysoprase]

When I was a skint student and couldn't really afford books I had a small collection which I read over and over again. Never really got out of the habit of keeping them, though most of the ones I have now I've probably only read once and won't ever open again.

I used to always finish books whether they were good, bad or indifferent. In recent years I've got out of that habit, realising that life's too short to wast time on bad books. I've got a slowly growing pile of those that I intend to give away to a charity shop, the only thing is most of those shops were closed during lockdown and weren't taking donations. There's a big university near where I live and next door there's an Oxfam second hand bookshop, I'll probably hand them all in there when that opens up again.

[Lemoentjie]

I put them in a bookshelf

[Un Pilier]

Reference books, history, biographies etc. I keep, unless I decide they are not up to scratch. Novels I will only keep if I think I’m likely to read them again or if they are inscribed, for example. Otherwise I give them to friends or charity shops despite my reservations about making it very hard for the average writer to make a living.

[Hal Jordan]

Books on weighty subjects go in the bookcase in the hall to display my pseudo intellectual superiority to visitors.

The books I actually read lurk in the loft conversion bedroom like a mistress in a penthouse suite.

Once finished, they go on the shelf and are then periodically pruned.

[lilyw]

Most novels etc I just gave to our local hospital. (Of late I've bought so few novels on paper that it's a moot point.)

I keep all reference, compendia, non-fiction ones, and certain novels that I re-read or writers that I particularly love (Murakami, James Joyce, A Suitable Boy, early Rushdie, In Search of Mr Y,....) on a book shelf in our dining room. My wife does the same & we probably have about 1,000 books there.

As a pleasant by-product my 2 now-adult daughters grew up up reading a really wide range of good literature and have totally caught the reading bug. They now recommend novels & authors to us.

[Slick]

Anything I like I keep for my future home super library, but also so I can try and encourage the kids to read them as they grow up.

Anything shite goes to a charity shop.

[ScarfaceClaw]

I have deliberately kept a copy of Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress that I bought for 50p at the charity shop. It is a constant reminder to me to never ever make that Dan Brown mistake again.

[Niegs]

Donate to a 'charity' that could really use them. I have a ton of military / history books that I finally have decided to discard and found that a museum not too far away has an annual book sale fundraiser. Two totes last year, have two more ready for when things open up fully.

So non-fictioned out at the moment, I might fully turn to fic (which has never really been a big interest to me).

[robmatic]

I have too many books and moving is a pain, so I'm trying not to expand my collection any more. I mostly buy new books on Kindle. With the physical ones, I keep it if it's a hardback or a nice edition or it's a book I particularly enjoyed. The other ones, I occasionally visit a book exchange place near my office where I will drop off a handful that I have culled from the shelves.

[Fangle]

When I moved to Kindle, I gave all my novels to the prison system which was looking for books.

[ScarfaceClaw]

When I moved to Kindle, I gave all my novels to the prison system which was looking for books.

That was the Shawshank Redemption Fangle.

[Yeeb]

I’ve inherited a huge number of books, some of them > 100 years old. Need to start hitting the ebay and stuff, virus has meant I’ve had bugger all response from the old book merchants who like hardback 1st editions

[Fangle]

When I moved to Kindle, I gave all my novels to the prison system which was looking for books.

That was the Shawshank Redemption Fangle.

Got me! But it’s actually true. The contact came from my wife’s book club.

[mat the expat]

I’ve inherited a huge number of books, some of them > 100 years old. Need to start hitting the ebay and stuff, virus has meant I’ve had bugger all response from the old book merchants who like hardback 1st editions

And there was I thinking you were going to talk a out peeling the pages apart.....

[Yeeb]

I’ve inherited a huge number of books, some of them > 100 years old. Need to start hitting the ebay and stuff, virus has meant I’ve had bugger all response from the old book merchants who like hardback 1st editions

And there was I thinking you were going to talk a out peeling the pages apart.....

Nopes
Porn before the 1970’s or in written form is of no interest to me, if you get some on pages or keyboard then your setup is all wrong

[Niegs]

I’ve inherited a huge number of books, some of them > 100 years old. Need to start hitting the ebay and stuff, virus has meant I’ve had bugger all response from the old book merchants who like hardback 1st editions

And there was I thinking you were going to talk a out peeling the pages apart.....

Nopes
Porn before the 1970’s or in written form is of no interest to me, if you get some on pages or keyboard then your setup is all wrong

Won't lie, having recently been learning about old school illustration, I want to see the inside of this sort of thing from the ridiculous article titles...

[Yeeb]

There is literally nothing there that does not interest me tbf ^^^^^

[Hal Jordan]

Refreshes bored page. Sees Yeeb has posted last on this thread. Opens thread. Not disappointed with assumptions made prior to doing so.

[Yeeb]

^^^^

8=>

That’s your willy

[Un Pilier]

Most novels etc I just gave to our local hospital. (Of late I've bought so few novels on paper that it's a moot point.)

I keep all reference, compendia, non-fiction ones, and certain novels that I re-read or writers that I particularly love (Murakami, James Joyce, A Suitable Boy, early Rushdie, In Search of Mr Y,....) on a book shelf in our dining room. My wife does the same & we probably have about 1,000 books there.

As a pleasant by-product my 2 now-adult daughters grew up up reading a really wide range of good literature and have totally caught the reading bug. They now recommend novels & authors to us.

Generally speaking I don’t get on with dense, overstuffed 1000 page volumes and I don’t really get James Joyce. Or Rushdie. I did enjoy Vikram Seth’s epic, though. Bought it in the 90s and tried to reread it recently following the excellent TV dramatisation. Print too small for me to enjoy now though.
Murakami I haven’t read much of. Just Norwegian Wood iirc - not really my thing but quite enjoyed it.