![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Ecology
Oct. 12th, 2010 10:48 amMany books went out of the house yesterday (and will go out today): 1 grocery bag plus 1 backpack plus 1 box of 10 books minus 5 books that came back because I can Ebay them.
Much of what went is stuff that I'd been collecting in the '90s because they seemed interesting, but which never turned out to actually interest me enough to read.
Among them were a big chunk of Howard miscellanea, because I'd kept every different anthology I had no matter how much duplication there might have been. And that was a lot for someone that I've just barely read. I kept the 12-book Carter Ace edition of Conan, plus a six-book adjunct by some writers I liked, as well as the nice 7-book Baen edition of books about his other heroes, plus my two Conan Chronicles from Millennium, which are the more authentic Conan stories, plus two books of his more direct Mythos fiction.
Also, I ditched all of the Haggard from the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library that I had. I'll admit it, the numbers on the volumes seduced me (24 in all!), but I've long moved past the point where I'll collect something like that simply for the joy of collecting, without much expectation of reading them. Since I've never been that interested in the whole lost-worlds theme, these were obvious books to go. I still have some Dunsany and Morris from the series. I find Dunsany somewhat hit or miss. I've never read Morris and should give him a try sometime.
Beyond that I pushed out the 12-volume set of Christopher Tolkien's rehashes and retreads of every scrap of paper that J.R.R. Tolkien ever wrote. I actually find Lord of the Rings a bit dry and long, so the odds of me ever reading those minutia were low. I did (of course!) keep the major Tolkien books, even ones that I haven't read like The Simarillion, but I just didn't see any need to keep what were essentially works in progress bound in hardcover on my shelves.
I also dumped many short story collections, because I don't really read short stories. I can see keeping them from a favorite author like Gene Wolfe, because I'll read a few of his every once in a while, but the random Isaac Asimov collections (which were among those I got rid of) were never going to be touched.
Finally, there was a ton of E.C. Tubb's Dumarest and a small set of the Virgin Doctor Who Adventures, which represented dupes I've gotten from lots as I have been collecting (and reading!) those series lately. (I just finished book #6 of Dumarest, and have already read book #7 and #9, and I've similarly recently finished book #10 of the Virgin New Adventures.) All of the good condition Tubbs went to stores, while the bad condition ones went to prisoners. The Doctor Who Adventures were the one thing I couldn't sell that I thought was worth keeping, so they went into a drawer at home to eBay someday. I didn't have luck when I tried to sell them singleton the other month, so instead I'll sell a lot after I get through buying them and make sure I don't have more dupes. (I'm a bit more than a half-dozen books short in the Virgin New Adventures collection, but most of them are the rarer and more expensive ones; happily, through perseverance, I've also picked up 3 or 4 or the rare/expensive ones for pretty cheap prices as I've collected.)
Lately I've been selling to Powells first, then giving Moe's the residue, then giving what's left to a books-for-prisoners program. I initiated this after Moe's started getting really bad in their bids, enough so that I walked away from one of them.
Strangely, the last two times I sold at Moe's they were really good again, even yesterday when the buyer who's given me very low prices before was buying. Maybe I was selling better stock, I dunno. But, they were hesitant on the Tolkien's, saying that they'd need to mark them down to sell, and I said they should give me a low price on them, and they did and they still gave more than I expected.
So, I ended up with $10 in trade credit at Powells and $120 at Moes, which is a world of difference. Still the Powells-Moes-prisoners ecology seems like a good one, because I don't have to take the Powells books out of my house (because the postman picks them up) and when I go to Moe's I don't have to bring anything back (since the residue goes to prisoners), unless I have books that I think are really worth selling on eBay (and that's pretty much only the case when I have a lot/collection).
I was pretty happy with the books that went to prisoners this time. Sometimes I drop off non-fiction or something and I wonder if they'll be useful, but this time I dropped off Howards and Tubbs, plus Asimov short stories, and a lot of them were short, visceral, and enjoyable, and I think someone(s) will enjoy them.
And my shelves and floors are now lighter of that many books, more than offsetting the Brusts, Tubbs, Eriksons, and Doctor Whos that I've brought into the house since I've started actually buying books again in the last year or two.
Much of what went is stuff that I'd been collecting in the '90s because they seemed interesting, but which never turned out to actually interest me enough to read.
Among them were a big chunk of Howard miscellanea, because I'd kept every different anthology I had no matter how much duplication there might have been. And that was a lot for someone that I've just barely read. I kept the 12-book Carter Ace edition of Conan, plus a six-book adjunct by some writers I liked, as well as the nice 7-book Baen edition of books about his other heroes, plus my two Conan Chronicles from Millennium, which are the more authentic Conan stories, plus two books of his more direct Mythos fiction.
Also, I ditched all of the Haggard from the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library that I had. I'll admit it, the numbers on the volumes seduced me (24 in all!), but I've long moved past the point where I'll collect something like that simply for the joy of collecting, without much expectation of reading them. Since I've never been that interested in the whole lost-worlds theme, these were obvious books to go. I still have some Dunsany and Morris from the series. I find Dunsany somewhat hit or miss. I've never read Morris and should give him a try sometime.
Beyond that I pushed out the 12-volume set of Christopher Tolkien's rehashes and retreads of every scrap of paper that J.R.R. Tolkien ever wrote. I actually find Lord of the Rings a bit dry and long, so the odds of me ever reading those minutia were low. I did (of course!) keep the major Tolkien books, even ones that I haven't read like The Simarillion, but I just didn't see any need to keep what were essentially works in progress bound in hardcover on my shelves.
I also dumped many short story collections, because I don't really read short stories. I can see keeping them from a favorite author like Gene Wolfe, because I'll read a few of his every once in a while, but the random Isaac Asimov collections (which were among those I got rid of) were never going to be touched.
Finally, there was a ton of E.C. Tubb's Dumarest and a small set of the Virgin Doctor Who Adventures, which represented dupes I've gotten from lots as I have been collecting (and reading!) those series lately. (I just finished book #6 of Dumarest, and have already read book #7 and #9, and I've similarly recently finished book #10 of the Virgin New Adventures.) All of the good condition Tubbs went to stores, while the bad condition ones went to prisoners. The Doctor Who Adventures were the one thing I couldn't sell that I thought was worth keeping, so they went into a drawer at home to eBay someday. I didn't have luck when I tried to sell them singleton the other month, so instead I'll sell a lot after I get through buying them and make sure I don't have more dupes. (I'm a bit more than a half-dozen books short in the Virgin New Adventures collection, but most of them are the rarer and more expensive ones; happily, through perseverance, I've also picked up 3 or 4 or the rare/expensive ones for pretty cheap prices as I've collected.)
Lately I've been selling to Powells first, then giving Moe's the residue, then giving what's left to a books-for-prisoners program. I initiated this after Moe's started getting really bad in their bids, enough so that I walked away from one of them.
Strangely, the last two times I sold at Moe's they were really good again, even yesterday when the buyer who's given me very low prices before was buying. Maybe I was selling better stock, I dunno. But, they were hesitant on the Tolkien's, saying that they'd need to mark them down to sell, and I said they should give me a low price on them, and they did and they still gave more than I expected.
So, I ended up with $10 in trade credit at Powells and $120 at Moes, which is a world of difference. Still the Powells-Moes-prisoners ecology seems like a good one, because I don't have to take the Powells books out of my house (because the postman picks them up) and when I go to Moe's I don't have to bring anything back (since the residue goes to prisoners), unless I have books that I think are really worth selling on eBay (and that's pretty much only the case when I have a lot/collection).
I was pretty happy with the books that went to prisoners this time. Sometimes I drop off non-fiction or something and I wonder if they'll be useful, but this time I dropped off Howards and Tubbs, plus Asimov short stories, and a lot of them were short, visceral, and enjoyable, and I think someone(s) will enjoy them.
And my shelves and floors are now lighter of that many books, more than offsetting the Brusts, Tubbs, Eriksons, and Doctor Whos that I've brought into the house since I've started actually buying books again in the last year or two.