Posted: May 31, 08 3:46pm

So, I'm in the middle of de-cluttering. Moved bookshelves, looked at books in boxes. I have something like 4,000 books stashed in various places in my house. Just finished remodeling a den with full wall built-in bookshelves, and now I'm going through my books, trying to figure out which ones:

To keep

To give away

To sell or trade for credit at my local bookstore.

I came across one - The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 3rd Series - and it stopped me cold. I remembered exactly when I bought the book (I was 19, and I received it from a book dealer in return for providing audio-visual services for an event).

Then I thought, "Hmmm, this is probably worth a few bucks," so I spent five or ten minutes checking it out on Abebooks (www.abebooks.com, one of the coolest 'bookselling' sites there is). Found out it might be worth 12-15 bucks (from a dealer), spent time thinking "hmmm. . .should I just try to sell it."

Then reality hit me - it wasn't the price of the book, it wasn't even whether I should sell it or give it away. It was that this book represented a little tidbit of my own personal history - giving it up felt a lot like giving up a small chunk of memory.

And yeah, sure, I know - I'm big on moving forward - but I also have a healthy respect for my past!!

Does anybody else ever have this kind of issue with their book collection? If so - how do you deal with it - what do you do? There's *No Way* I can spend 20-30 minutes of personal time figuring out what to do individually with thousands of books!! But - I'm really committed to clearing up at least this facet of my life.

Help me, Obi-Wan - you're my only hope! :)

Cheers

-Jeff