Too Many Books: Is It Possible?

I really love books. I buy them all the time, people give them to me, I swap with friends and family. When we moved into this house over eight years ago, there was endless closet space, and more book shelves than I knew what to do with. Now, piles of books sit everywhere, shaming me because they are all books that I really want to read but haven't gotten to. I just cannot throw books away. How to get this mess under control?

I spent the entire New Year's weekend organizing the endless stacks of books. Here's what I decided to to:

#1: Stop buying books. Amazon Prime offers cheap, instant gratification. Buy any book with one-click shopping and it arrives two days later, without fail. This is a wonderful service, but not helpful for those of us with addictive reading habits. I counted up how many books I ordered in 2008 (45) and how many I actually read: 8. That's only 18%. And doesn't count the books that I bought a Costco (such bargains!), bookstores (must support independent proprietors) and airports (cannot stand plane rides without reading material), or those given to me, which would easily double the total. So, I've made an agreement with myself: no more buying books for at least six months, or make a significant dent in the unread books.

#2: Figure out which books you really want to read. After hours going through the books in our home office, I was able to divide them into a couple of piles: books I want to read, books I either read or never intend to, books I want to keep (travel, art, business, wine, a few select novels), and books that my husband has to deal with. Now, all of the books that I want to read are on one table (see pic above), in one place that's just mine (there are over 70 books there btw). The ones that I've read or don't want are going to be donated to the Riverside Public Library. The ones I want to keep are going into our library downstairs (but not until I go through those shelves and organize into piles like above). My husband's are his problem.

#3: Get a library card. Yes, that big building with all the books in it is the library. It might have been my many years in New York City, and the odoriferous patrons of my local branch there, but I've never been much of a fan of of public libraries. Also, might have also been the hundreds of dollars of fines I racked up as a kid at the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library. But what a surprise! I had a card in two minutes, found the book I needed to read for my book club ("The Road From Coorain," by Jill Ker Conway: I highly recommend it), and was out the door. They'll also take all of our unwanted books (they keep what they want and sell the rest to raise money for the library).

#4: Donate the books you've read or have no intention of ever reading. I'm giving my excess books to my local public library in Riverside, IL. You can donate your unwanted books to your public library too. Just be sure that they are in good condition. There are dozens of other places that would love your unwanted books too, if you'd like to check them out. Here's a couple of the best...

The Newberry Library accepts (and will pick up!) books year round for their annual book sale in July. Click through for details and instructions.

Open Books is a Chicago-based literacy organization. They accept book donations to sell in their bookstore, which supports their literacy programs in public schools. I highly recommend this program. They will pick up books in Chicago as well.

#5 Join Book Swim. My sister, an even more avid reader than I, turned me onto this. It's Netflix for books. Create your "pool" of books, pay a monthly fee, and you get books. Never any overdue fees either.

What are your strategies for dealing with book creep?