One of my ongoing goals is to go through all of my books and pull out anything I know I no longer want, read anything I am on the fence about keeping and decide if it is a keeper or headed for Paperbackswap or to donate.

I only want to keep books that I either really love or am really looking forward to reading. My problem is that I kept many books from years ago that just don’t appeal to me any longer but I was holding on to them because I figured there must be some reason I still had them after all these years. Turns out after  re-reading them to decide if I keep them or not that I was wrong and there is now  a huge donate pile of books ready to go.

I buy all my books used or get them from paperbackswap and If I don’t keep myself in check I will continue to read the new, interesting books rather than the older(but still interesting)books that have been sitting on my shelf.  I’m working on limiting the number of new books that come in until I catch up on reading the books that I already have.

I find that I have no patience for books that have no blurb or really any kind of information on the back, the inside flaps or anywhere. Really? Your book is so good that you don’t have to tell me anything about it to make me want to read it. I have come across several of those and I usually force myself to skim a few pages and mostly they don’t catch my fancy so in the donate pile they go. I don’t have time to slog through books that are a chore to read. (This book was a tough read, but I stuck with it, and in the end I loved it. The problem was that so many people had similar/the same names it was easy to to lose track of who was who)

I’m one of those people who feel guilty if they don’t finish a book, or I should say I was one of those people who felt guilty if they didn’t finish a book. Now, I give it a few pages and then I skim to see if it gets better if it doesn’t get better I give it up for a lost cause and move on. ( I do sometimes check book review sites to see what other people think about a book)

It has actually been a lot of fun to rediscover books that have been buried in the bookshelves. I have also taken the opportunity to re-organize my books and fill in any missing books in series that I like. I’m now looking forward to reading several series start to finish now that I have complete sets. I have to say that paperbackswap has been really great for getting books that I was missing without having to spend a fortune. I had  a mix of hard and softcover Harry Potter Books and wanted all hard cover copies. I put up all my softcover copies on paberbackswap and got hardcover copies from there as well. It took awhile but eventually I got all the books I needed to complete my set. If you have the patience to wait for a book you want paperbackswap is a great resource.

Right now I am reading this bookIsaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 4 Spells.

It is a collection of short stories. Normally I am not a huge fan of short stories as it seems like as soon as I get good and interested in the story it is over. I’m about halfway through right now. The first story in the book I found to be quite interesting. It’s The Candidate and was written by Henry Slesar. It’s only a few pages long, and the ending is perfect.