BTT: Weeding

Weeding (from Booking Through Thursday)

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain?
Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all? (This would have described me for most of my life, by the way.)
And–when you DO weed out books from your collection (assuming that you do) …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore?  SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

A few months ago, I culled my TBR from 800+ down to 400+, I also culled my home library.  I seem to feel the need to weed my library about once every year or two.  In previous years, I have done a lot of book buying (via Amazon, Chapters, and The Word On The Street festival in Toronto).  I have learned my lesson the hard way to borrow books from the library first before wasting my money buying a book I end up not liking.  I now prefer to buy only books I know I loved and want to reread.  The rest of my library is made up of books I have bought, were free, or had given to me that I haven't read yet.  When I do weed my library, I either donate them to one of the two libraries I work at, offer them to friends, or (depending on age and condition of the book) I recycle them.

Read on,
Paula

All I needed was a little time??

It seems I fell into the terrible self-perpetuating hole of the reading equivalent of writer's block.  Is there such a thing as reader's block?  According to Mr. Google there is.  Anyway, I noticed today that I am doing much better.  I took a week off work last week and managed to finish two books that I had been slowly working my way through.  That made me feel so proud of myself.  I am currently working my way through my e-book version of "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre.  It's good and I am enjoying it.  And I have evidence that I am retaining what I read because I have noticed a few times now that there are chunks of pages that repeat themselves.  Because of that, I have no idea how much more of the book there actually is to read.  Although my iBooks app says I am on page 985 of 1474, I don't know how many of those remaining 489 pages will be repeats.  I'm hoping to finish it in the next few days either way.  I have so many enticing books taunting me to read them so I hope my reading habit will continue to pick up its pace but all I can do is be patient.  Like writer's block, if I stop thinking about it and just give it a chance, hopefully the inspiration to read will come flooding back.

Perhaps this would be a good time to read a book about reading.

Read on,
Paula

Book bingo

The Books on the Nightstand podcast has created book bingo cards for your summer reading pleasure.  I printed two cards for myself because I am hoping it will finally eliminate my reading slump.  I am reading but not nearly as zealously as usual.  However, the book I am currently reading (slowly) checks off four of the boxes.  Here is an example of one of the cards available.  Because they are random, I couldn't find again the ones I printed off for myself.

One of the things I love about this is that it is timeless.  You can reuse them over and over no matter what time of year it is.

Read on,
Paula