Books are the hardest to cull! I’m down to probably 1400, but would happily donate grad school texts to anyone ( foolish enough) to be working on a PhD in my field). M’s got about 7,000 books ….
My rule of thumb since 2005 or so has been to ask, "Can I get this in a lighter or digital form?" and follow up with "If I lose this, how easy will it be to replace?" And books--especially midlist or obscure ones from about 1960 to 1990--seem to have fallen into a valley where they were never turned into audiobooks and were never transcribed as ebooks, but they're still under copyright so only the big companies can do anything with them.
I would love to still have my academic/theory books, but as it became increasingly obvious that I'd never find a practical use for them in the future, it was also hard to justify holding onto them. But it was nice to have a wall of "I am THIS smart!" to greet people, back in the day.
Books are the hardest to cull! I’m down to probably 1400, but would happily donate grad school texts to anyone ( foolish enough) to be working on a PhD in my field). M’s got about 7,000 books ….
My rule of thumb since 2005 or so has been to ask, "Can I get this in a lighter or digital form?" and follow up with "If I lose this, how easy will it be to replace?" And books--especially midlist or obscure ones from about 1960 to 1990--seem to have fallen into a valley where they were never turned into audiobooks and were never transcribed as ebooks, but they're still under copyright so only the big companies can do anything with them.
I would love to still have my academic/theory books, but as it became increasingly obvious that I'd never find a practical use for them in the future, it was also hard to justify holding onto them. But it was nice to have a wall of "I am THIS smart!" to greet people, back in the day.