Where Do The Books You've Read Go?

I’m asking, because I need new creative places to take them! I have long ago left behind the notion that I could keep all the books I’d read. As a teenager, it didn’t seem so difficult–stack them in a corner of the room, and let them be. By college, I didn’t want to lug them back and forth from home to school, so I left larger piles in my parent’s house, usually my bedroom closet, and some piles in my dorm room. Once out on my own in the teeniest apartment in the world, keeping any books I’d just read was impossible so I think I may have slowed down on consumption, because I don’t remember reading all that much in the months right after graduation.

Once in New York and sharing with two other people, space was a premium, and once again I believe my reading was cut down to a minimum–trying to find work and working while trying to find acting jobs, gave me little time.

But this changed when I started working at Lorry’s Book Company. All those books! Slowly my bookshelves in the small apartment began to fill and they didn’t get emptier after I’d read some because most were now art, or architecture, or illustration books, and those are keepers. But the ones I didn’t need anymore I began to place on the heat register in front of the mailboxes on the first floor. I took them down as I left the building–no way was I going to make a trip up and down a 5 floor walk-up just to leave a couple of paperbacks for some one to take.

And this practice continued until the landlord got pissy and demanded nothing be left there–probably because others had taken up the habit and now boxes of books were being deposited and no takers. Not big reading apartment dwellers, I suppose.

When I started seriously collecting first editions and vintage crime fiction, I didn’t get rid of anything, except a few reading copies here and there, and I’d bring them into the my place of employment  and hand them off to co-workers.

But then the real problems began. What to do with advance reading copies I never read, and paperbacks that seemed promising but I didn’t get around to and now don’t really want to read anymore, and freebies I never had any intention of reading? I felt so guilty ditching books I’d not at  given a chance that I held on to them in case I changed my mind, which created a huge amount of tomes tottering all over the apartment.

Once I returned to my parents house to help with the care of my ailing dad, things got better because I’d left all those books back in the apartment! However, bit by bit, boxes upon boxes were brought down, and I had to contend with a zillion signed first editions, old paperbacks, unread hardcovers, and just about every book any mystery author wrote.

So, now, once a book is read and not on my mental must keep list, I put in a pile to go somewhere. But where? Ok, library sales are always a good idea. Help out the local establishment make some dough. Downside? I also buy from there, and quite often pick up a book and find it’s been inscribed to me! Or, I buy back the same title I donated, forgetting I’d already read it!

Of course there’s the trade in paperback places-but that’s the catch–paperbacks only. For a little while that was working out well, there was a place that had loads of books and I found many that interested me so trading almost made sense. But after a bit I noticed the inventory never seemed to change, and that’s not good for the purchaser, when he brings good titles into the store but can’t go out with the same quality and quantity.

A couple of other trade in stores have been explored, but the same thing seems to afflict them. Still, the books are gone and I have some credits or, the books are gone and now I’ve brought three times my credit back home with me.

And I have traded many untouched hardcovers to a well established bookshop that wouldn’t allow trade ins for recent titles, and all the older ones I ‘d read, so I didn’t get much of a bargain there–except boxes and boxes of books were out of my mother’s basement. And I had the large credit to look forward to. Until the store went belly up out of nowhere.

I would give as many G rated novels as possible to my godmother but she’s struggling with dementia  and no longer reads, sadly.

I’ve thought about trading on the internet–even joined some kind of paperback exchange. I’m just to damn lazy to do more work online even if it does lower the piles by a goodly measure.  And selling? Ugh! There are a billion gazillion people who are selling books online, my teeny finger in the air will not be seen by a single reader–the time and money one must have to put into this practice is staggering. And not worth it for some valueless types of titles.

I do intend to check out a few hypermodern prices, and see if I can sell them on bookfinder somewhere–they are too good to just give away, but not good enough for me to want to keep!

So now I’m reduced to putting some every once in awhile in a plastic carry all bag for my mother to take into her senior exercise class, even though they only seem to want romance novels, which I certainly don’t have.

Please, help me out here! What good places do any of you know of to recycle hardcover books, in particular, and any kind of book, in general? I’ll have my forklift ready for action the minute someone gives me a good tip!