culling my library

my wife has been after me to get rid of some of the thousands of books I've got scattered around our home and we made a deal last week that, in return for her collecting some of her unworn clothes that lays in heaps around the bedroom, I would find a place where I can donate some books. it so happened that I noticed the organization people serving people was having a children's book drive.

so over the next few days I collected 3 boxes full of mostly young adult novels (I discovered just how few actual children's books I own, which is to say next to 0, but I did have many that I enjoyed as a young reader and that I think most teens would relish). these included several dozen I'd filched from free library discard piles specifically, I told myself, for this very eventuality.

I'm ridding myself of my beloved weird heroes collections from the 70s. they are near worthless monetarily but I adored them and I think it's wrong of me to bogart them when they could be enjoyed by other kids. the same for my francesca lia block novels, including my 7 copies of weetzie bat (even a 1st edition that, had it not been a library copy, might have been worth $75, but it's worth more as a book some girl can read). I've gathered a small cache of brian jacques redwall novels for precisely this purpose, and the same for c.s. lewis' narnia books. I've got what I think is a solid girl-friendly hero collection, including marion zimmer bradley's mists of avalon, sheri tepper's sideshow and phillip pullman's golden compass, as well as all the aforementioned blocks. I've even included a history of hip hop from about a decade ago that still has its accompanying cd (I've only played it 3 or 4 times).

all in all I'm quite proud of myself. of course, I must remind myself, all I've done is collect and box the books; I've yet to actually drop them off, and I'm finding many reasons to put off taking the hourlong trip to the center of the hub in order to do that. still, there is something to be said for the morale of actually doing the thing for which the delivery is the smallest part.