Booking Through Thursday: Weeding #meme

This meme is hosted by Booking Through Thursday Blog. This week’s question is:

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain?

Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all? (This would have described me for most of my life, by the way.)

And–when you DO weed out books from your collection (assuming that you do) …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore?  SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

I used to have a LOT more books than I do now. I brought a lot of them with me when I went away to college. Somewhere in my senior year, they went missing. The whole large tub of them. I have a feeling they were stolen from my storage unit while I was home on vacation in between semesters – and it upsets me because I had a lot of great books. But, maybe someone needed the comfort of those words more than I did.

I do have some books that I will be weeding out here, soon. I may do a monthly giveaway of some books I can give away although I am not sure if I can really part with books consistently so it may just be as needed. I find it rare that I ever want to give up books. They are like a collectors item to me. I love the look of books on a bookshelf. I like the feeling I get when someone comes over and they stare at all my books and it encourages them to read more and before long, they are asking to borrow something from those wonderful shelves.

When I do weed out books, I either give them away or I trade them for others. Sometimes I sell them. It really all depends. When sharing my books with others, there really is no one particular rule or situation.