Library Clean-Out Time!

Woohoo!

Yes!

It's that time of year where I've looked at my library and thought: 'OMG! I've got too many books; and I don't know if I'm going to read this one, or that one, or any of those! I seriously need to clean this library out!'

So, I grabbed a couple of boxes from Bunnings (a big gardening store which leaves their boxes out for anyone to grab) and today, I'm cleaning out my home library.

I usually have a lot of fun doing this because I come across a lot of books I haven't seen in a long time, and usually I wonder how long they've been there and why I never read them. And, if I'm doing this clean-out, it means I'm never going to read them.

So, with the books I'm getting rid of, I'm hoping to sell the good ones off to new homes and give away the other ones in a Big Book Giveaway on Bookcrossing... this will be fun! 

Have you done this to your library over the years? It's very cleansing isn't it? I do it every year to keep my library fresh and know what's there. Until my next post, happy reading!

Tossed Out

One of my neighbours died recently. I didn't know anything about him - not his name, what he looked like, his age; nothing. I knew he was around 30 years old, died from a heart attack and was Irish, and had only been living in my unit complex for around 2 months before he died alone in his bedroom.

This is no way to die. 

Over the past few weeks, the Irish Embassy have been working with his family to get his remains back home and his belongings as well - and I really wish I had gotten to know him as a neighbour; as I normally say hello to everyone around the place I live because I've lived here for so long, it's just something I do.

But today, I saw something which was really sad: there were a couple of guys who were throwing out his things and this included all of his books. Man, there must have been over a hundred books just being tossed into the recycling bin outside his townhouse. I noticed them being tossed as I drove past and it caused me to turn around and park my car next to one of the other neighbour's places, walk over and ask if I could look through the bin. The guys said yes, and so I started looking.

There were so many titles I was amazed at the collection he had. He read Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Dick Francis, Michael Connelly, and other great author as well. He was into biographies as well... authorised and unauthorised editions. There were some greats such as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Michael Hutchence amongst the collection too; all of which I picked up to add to my collection. Sadly, they all had bookmarks in their pages, places where he had gotten up to and he'll never finish. 

I kinda felt sad as I cleaned the books with anti-bacterial wipes at how nice the books were, and yet he'd never read them again. He had great taste in literature and in murder mysteries and the classics, and yet nobody knew who he was as a person here all because we were too busy to talk to him as a person. The books alone make me feel as though we really should get to know others before anything else goes horribly bad in our lives... and even though reading and books are a good connection, how are people supposed to know this if we don't talk about our passions of the written word openly? 

So, do any of your neighbours know you love to read? Do they know which of your books are you favourites, and who your favourite poet is? If not, why not? Are you too shy to let somebody know you like Poe or that you're into Shakespearean Theatre or even the opera? Why are we so scared to let people know what we love the most - after all, we're all so open to let everyone know what we hate. Until my next post, happy reading.