Every winter since we’ve been married, my husband and I plan a remodeling project during his downtime when remodelling jobs become scarce. This year it’s rugs for the master and guest bedrooms. We decided to do the guestroom first, which necessitated moving hundreds of books from my two TBR (to-be-read, as every booklover knows) bookcases–and a task I’ve been looking forward to and dreading at the same time.

I’ve accumulated a lot of books over the years, more than any one person (at least one with a job) could possibly read. If one loves books, one is given them in stacks when people clear out their own bookshelves. Writers and aspiring writers are given them free at conferences, and buy them by the dozens too. I used to come home with a lot more freebies than I do now, not only because I’ve become more selective but because airline baggage charges have made that too expensive a practice to continue. I used to think I would get to every book I owned, eventually. I always had, and I never ever wanted again to be in the horrific (to a booklover) position of having Nothing To Read, as I was in the Blizzard of ‘78. And so I had accumulated romances and novels of all kinds–historicals, category romance, suspense, horror, vampire, even some glitz-and-glamour from the 80’s. (I just want to say I did NOT buy that!)

And I’d come to the conclusion that, since I’ve becoming a published author, not only had my available reading time shrunk, but my tastes had changed. I’m now an author of Christian fiction, and there was no way I would ever read some of these books. Not even during a blizzard. So I embarked on the Great Discard. I set up two series of boxes, one for the Kidney Foundation, one for my sister-in-law Carole, who loves the old, lush historicals once disdainfully referred to as bodice rippers. The contemporary fiction went to the Kidney Foundation.

I kept a lot of them–about half. All the Christian fiction, and the best of the historicals, the westerns, medievals and Regencies, as well as many suspense and legal thrillers. A whole shelf of vampire romance. I now have a manageable amount on those two bookcases, with room for more. Looking at those old covers, reading the back blurbs, was like walking down the memory lane of my book-collecting life. How the covers have changed! Much more tasteful now–at least the ones I like. Nothing that would embarrass me to be seen reading it in public. But there was something really appealing in the best of those old lush covers of the longer books of that era when historicals really hit it big.

I bought a lot more books in those days “to be nice,” frankly. I bought books of email contacts I thought were friends. Not all of them really were. I’ve stopped buying books that way any more. I’m more careful with my book dollars, as I suspect most of us are.

Now I have some vacant shelf space–where is that book catalogue? I need to buy some more!

Blessings, Laurie