The Great Book Unhaul of 2019

Every so often — by which I mean maybe once every three to five years — I do a huge book unhaul. I’m so, so bad at getting rid of books I own. Even books that I’ve absolutely hated have a place on my shelves. I just like being surrounded by words.

But in all of my unpacking, I realized that I’ve moved into a much, much smaller place than I came from. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I have maybe a quarter of the space that I used to. I went from a two-story, two-bedroom townhouse to a small one-bedroom apartment. My old place had a built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the living room. Needless to say, my new place does not.

I thought I could do it. I moved all of the books. But there’s really no place. So an unhaul it is.

I can’t really say that there was a method to my madness, because there really wasn’t. All I can say is that I’m getting rid of 102 books. Honestly, it felt really good and I’ll probably end up doing another pass through my books at some point.

So, what did I get rid of? I’m glad you asked.

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Let’s start off with the twenty-five books that my ex wanted to throw in the garbage. Whatever my feelings toward my ex, I think we can all agree that books do not belong in the garbage. Most of these are books that I gave to him over the years, but some are old textbooks and some are nonfiction books that he bought himself. I should probably also mention that I’ve already gotten rid of ten or fifteen other textbooks that he nearly threw away.

But enough about him and his books. On to the more exciting ones.

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Next up is the thirty-four YA books that I’ll never re-read. I didn’t do a great job taking pictures of these ones, so I’ll also include here the sixteen adult books I’m getting rid of and the ten non-fiction books I’m passing on to a better home.

(I’m not sharing pictures of all of them because it’s just too many.)

These books really range from ones I really enjoyed, like the Anna and the French Kiss series and a bunch of Huntley Fitzpatrick’s books, to ones I really hated, like Down and Across and Lone Wolf Lawman. I’m also getting rid of The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, because… obviously. There’s also a Hunger Games box set that I really, really hope I didn’t spend $54 on.

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I’m also getting rid of a whole series (thirteen books) that I was absolutely obsessed with when I was in middle school — Cathy Hopkins’ Mates, Dates series. I loved this series so much that I’d save up my money to go to the Bookworld on Main Street and buy the next book in the series. Unfortunately, the books are not nearly as good as I remember, or maybe I’m too old, because I definitely cringed all the way through a re-read of the first in the series.

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Last up is a pretty small stack of ARCs that I’m just going to donate to the used bookstore’s ARC shelf. I never quite know what to do with old ARCs, but my favorite used bookstore (in NJ, at least) has a shelf of free ARCs since, obviously, selling ARCs is not allowed.

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My first stop is going to be the used bookstore that I mentioned above. They give store credit for any books that they accept, and hopefully they’ll accept most of these. Quite honestly, I’m okay with getting very little money for them because I just want them out of my apartment so that I can free up some space. I believe that the bookstore will donate any books they don’t accept to the library, which is nice.

Fingers crossed that I’ll be back with The Great Book Unhaul of 2019, Part 2 later this year, since I’m sure my book-buying problem isn’t going anywhere.

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Have you done a book unhaul recently? What do you like to do with the books you no longer want to keep? Have you read any of the books I’m getting rid of? Let’s talk in the comments!

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