Bookshelf Sustainability

A few days before my vacation Toronto, I went through the library of books in my apartment, and organized them into two shelves, one for the books I've read and another for the books I haven't read. My situation isn't as bad as Ealasaid's, with a bookshelf of unread books that at least doubles the size of mine, but at least until I read them all, a new rule: for every book that I buy, regardless of whether I've read that newly bought book or not, I will give away one book. No rules around size or whether I've already read it, or who gets it (a friend, a stranger, the used bookstore, or the library). This is just my way of keeping the number of things in my apartment to a minimum, and ensuring bookshelf sustainability, while at the same time knowing that I'll never have to worry about running out of things to read.

Comments

Now that is a fabulous system. I may have to implement that for my own bookshelf!

A better term might have been 'bookshelf neutrality', but I want to ride the wave of sustainability. Also, 'acquire' might be a better word to use than 'buy', since someone might gift me books. (Stealing books breaks the covenant.) I also don't see why I can't give away books, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse to buy more. Let me know how it goes if you implement this system. One of these days I'll get my library cataloged so that it can feel like a real lending library, with punishment for late returns and everything!

MediaChest and Billmonk (with SMS payment!) can both help you do that. Now all you need is software for interpreting barcodes from cellphone pictures, and then there's not even typing involved.

I already have software (that I had to compile!) that does this. Turns out it's still faster to type in titles, for example, when I was trying out LibraryThing, than having to position each book just right in the iSight.