My library: A ramble

When we moved  to our new place, one of the biggest unpacking jobs was dealing with all the books. Because OMG SO MANY BOOKS

As I thought about it I was wondering exactly how many books. Particularly as I was unpacking and realized that between us Tom and I managed to acquire 4 different copies of the Odyssey.

That is too many copies. I wondered exactly what books do we have and since I heart spreadsheets I thought I'd catalogue all of the books we have.

The tally comes to:
522 paperbacks
116 ebooks
72 hardback
13 audiobooks
11 comics
6 graphic novels

Which sounds like the breakout I expected, if far more in each category than I would have guessed. Paperback is my preference, though ebooks are easy to tote around so that category has been growing. The comics are almost entirely Calvin & Hobbes collections, while more than half of the audiobooks are made up of the HP series, though I only have those as audiofiles instead of having an actual physical item, which makes moving nice.

because every other part of moving sucks

This list does not include some books we moved up to the attic, mostly old text books that we probably just should have gotten rid of except at the time we just wanted to get them out of the way and those boxes are heavy so they're probably going to stay right where they are.

Now that I have this in front of me, I was wondering who makes up the bulk of the work. Top authors (and authors is used sort of loosely, which will make sense given the list):

30 Shakespeare
19 The Mets
15 Christopher Moore
15 J.K. Rowling
13 Bill Bryson
13 Bill James
13 Stephen King
12 Jasper Fforde
11 Bill Watterson

Shakespeare wins and this just counts the plays by him and not all the books I have about him. There are a couple "Complete Works" here, along with a number of duplicates. I believe we have 3 individual copies of Hamlet and Richard III, and that doesn't count the fact that I have 4 different versions of Midsummer.

The Mets come in next but the team isn't actually penning all of these books, so much as Tom has a bunch of yearbooks for the team.

I have 15 each of Rowling and Moore books, and I'm pretty sure those 2 authors cover the widest range of categories. I have both authors stuff in paperback, hardback, and audiobooks, and one of my Moore books is an ebook.

There are a lot of Bills on this list. Who knew that was such a poplar name? Bill James does sports almanacs, one of each comes out each year (so much sports), hence his large number.

The biggest thing I've learned from putting this list together is I really need to cut down my books. I love books, obviously. And a lot of the books I have I do like to revisit and reread, either in part or the whole thing. But there are a lot of books here that I'm never going to touch again. Or there are a lot of books that we have duplicates of. And I don't even mean different prints or translations; we have a bunch of books where Tom and I brought the exact same version to the table. Or just Tom, cos somehow he managed to collect a few duplicates all on his own.

The question is now what to do with the books. I'll probably do some giveaways with the books I think people might actually like. But what to do with the others? I know there are options out there: donating to a library, or a school, or a prison or selling to a used bookstore. Have any of you gone any of these routes and if so what was your experience?