Moving with your Book Collection

[Chris]

Welp, it's that time again. I generally move every few years, and this week I'm on the move again--although not far this time. My biggest headache when moving is always how to move all my books. My collection has grown exponentially over the last four years to approx 300-400 books, which equates to roughly five large trunks full to the brim. As such, I plan on giving away 75-100 of my books to cull the herd (broken down as such--85% are books I've read and know I won't reread and 15% are books I've had for a long time and realize I'll probably never end up reading).

Given all this, I think this move might be the turning point of my book buying addictive behavior. The last year and a half I've been transitioning to not buying as many books and instead starting to use the library. I've also ended up buying a couple e-books when the library hasn't had a particular book I want. I've realized of my read books I only have a need to keep ~15 of them that in my opinion are must keep favorites and likely re-reads for me in the future. Given that, I think it will make more sense for me to rely on the library and only make purchases when I absolutely love a book and deem it re-read worthy.

How have others dealt with the inevitable pains associated with taking your books in a move? Has anyone changed their book buying behavior as a result?

[ஐ Katya (Book Queen)ஐ]

I still prefer dead tree books but will buy some bundled cheap ebooks. I have over 6k real books in my house so I dread ever moving!

[David]

The trouble is all these nice tempting books being sold off for a penny each on Amazon.

[Kathryn]

Dave wrote: "The trouble is all these nice tempting books being sold off for a penny each on Amazon."

This is my problem! It's so cheap why not buy it!

I've moved from the US to the UK. The bulk of my books still reside in my parents basement. I am slowly moving them over a handful at a time. This is not optimal and I know that I've bought books here that are in my parents basement. But, as Dave said, they cost 1p off of amazon and some I've found in charity shops. On my next trip I plan to have a very serious sort and get rid of ones that I won't read again or have duplicate copies. That way when people come to visit they can just grab whatever is on top.

[David]

My problem, as I think I explained somewhere above, is that (like my wife with clothes) I can't bear to discard them. That's why, at my last count some 10 years ago, I then had over 3,000.

[Kathryn]

Donating a book isn't really discarding it - its giving someone else the chance to enjoy it.

I totally understand not wanting to part with books. It will take years of me not rereading a book for me to even consider passing it on. I'm ok with getting rid of duplicates. I don't want to use my precious suitcase weight/space on something that I already have at home. That space could be used for other books or wine!

[Joseph]

When I was shopping for a house to move into out of my apartment, I had about 5000 books so the main thing I was looking for was one with a lot of rooms for space for my library. Since moving into my new home a little over a year ago my library has already increase by a little over 1000 books. I can't imagine moving again because it took a couple months of packing and unpacking and driving my car back and forth from apartment to house to move my collection the first time.

[Virginia]

I've told myself when I get to uni I'm only going to have one box of books. I need to learn to get rid of them once I've read them, read more of them, and buy less.

It's going okay so far. When I moved back to my parents recently I got rid of at least 100.

[Melissa]

I haven't had to move in 12 years and then I moved because of a house fire so moving books wasn't an issue for me. If I had to move now it would take a while to get my books boxed and moved so it isn't a thought that I like to dwell on. I think if I had to move them I would probably cull them out a little bit but I think I would find a way to get them all to go with me.

I have recently been culling my shelves out a little, someone I know was telling me about a lady who loves to read in the nursing home she works at and that she had read the same book 7 times in the last 3 months because she didn't have a lot of books to read. With incentive like that it didn't take long to find a box full of books that I didn't feel I needed on my shelves anymore.

[Karen M]

I'm anticipating moving in a year or two so every small to medium size box that arrives here ends up being filled with the books I've read. I'm up to eight boxes, maybe, 150 books packed. Luckily I haven't run out of room for the boxes yet. I only have a little over 400 books total but since I've acquired about 50 books in the past year who knows what the count will be by the time I move. LOL