I’ve been busy with spring cleaning, which is always a chore. Still, it’s nice to brush the dust off things and see reminders of the past. One of the items on my chore list has been going through my book collection. As you can imagine, I have drawers filled with books. Shelves are stacked high with paperbacks. I have boxes of books, waiting to be read. I’m trying to weed through these and find a better organization system. I’ve received a lot of books at conferences, and then there are always the stacks of books I get to judge for the RITA contest every year. Those books are fun to investigate, but they aren’t the ones with which I have a connection.
I have books that I will keep forever, no matter what fantastic technology comes along. I have the old Linda Howard Silhouette books. (Yes, all of them.) I have a lot of Sandra Brown’s early works. I found an Anne Stuart thriller that I remember reading on vacation. My friend asked to read it, and I warned her it was dark, but she gobbled it up, too. There’s the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, all in paperback (except the last two, which I bought in ebook form because I couldn’t wait for the paperbacks. Who started that stupid trend?) I have Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series (same for that one.) Dare I go on?
The point is, it’s very hard for me as a reader to try to downsize. I get pulled into back cover blurbs. I hold onto unread books, because I might have liked something the author wrote before. I want to keep weak books by my favorite authors, just because. Do you see my problem?
How have you handled the switch to digital? Or have you even tried? I’m looking for pointers to try to get me through this project, or I’m going to end up with even more books than I started with! 🙂