Flutterby™! : Book Purge 2003-11-19 03:25:24.168675+00

Book Purge

2003-11-19 03:25:24.168675+00 by Dan Lyke 12 comments

I'm trying to mend my packrat ways; having this much stuff is costing me money and sanity, and I'm going through my posessions looking at each object as though I were making the decision to buy it, right now.

I have a boatload of books. Especially a lot of computer books. Everything from the classic language books (Programming in Prolog by Clocksin and Mellish, Timothy Budd's A Little Smalltalk, Seymour Papert's Mindstorms) to hardware references (80486 System Architecture, Third Edition), to graphics books (from Newman & Sproull forward), both academic and mass-market.

I hate to dumpsterize all of these, I fear if I drop them on my local thrift store I'll just be saddling them with objects they don't understand, and my local used bookstores are of the "fiction 6 months old or less" variety. Anyone have suggestions? Anyone willing to take a shipping crate and figure out what to do with its contents? Does anyone care about the classics like Kernighan and Plauger's Software Tools any more?

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-19 05:15:43.818419+00 by: aiworks [edit history]

I hate getting rid of books. I always seem to need them later (although normally much later).

-Find a used bookstore with a free bin out front. Nothing stays in there very long.

-Clip the spines and scan them. Of course, you'll need access to a big scanner. You'll never see that content again and you just never know.

(tried to send this via the news server, but it appears to have not worked -- and I'm too tired to debug it at the moment...)

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-19 06:32:48.585179+00 by: dexev

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-19 11:31:25.922209+00 by: beoneel

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-19 14:10:58.432414+00 by: ebradway

I've sold a bunch of stuff through Amazon. Older computer books don't sell well. The free bin at the used bookstore works well.

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-19 15:57:48.87367+00 by: Dan Lyke

I've got a bunch of non-computerish stuff that'll probably go well at the local thrift stores, although I might have a bunch of Bloom County

and the like in the stash I ship to the east coast to make sure the boxes don't rattle.

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-19 22:59:51.84082+00 by: meuon

Stuff purging myself.. fighting the urge to by an RV.. and whatever don't fit.. don't fit.

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-20 01:03:35.772208+00 by: Dan Lyke

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-20 03:04:11.768587+00 by: phoffman

Maybe eBay, after you have figured out the actual postage for "media mail". Make it better by offering to donate the high bid (minus postage) to the ACM or someone like that.

#Comment Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-20 05:35:26.418783+00 by: meuon

Yea.. I miss the airstream. It was like a personal cocoon, and whatever didn't fit, didn't. My life has changed some, but it's an alluring lifestyle choice right now. I looking for a house, but I'm kinda particular in weird ways. It needs to be low maintenance enough I can disappear for weeks at a time. And yet.. I now have friends that I would like to share some personal space with. I also can now 'camp' for weeks at a time out of my truck. Talk about changes in lifestyle, I now own 3 tents and a Hennessy Hammock, 2 camping stoves.. 4 sleeping bags.. and.. and.. Which as I now have two good laptops, one setup as a Linux web/sql development server (w/120gb external firewire drive) it gets temping to grab my solar panels and head for someplace out of the way to create something kewl and profitable. It's almost possible now, I have to get a few more things done first. It's almost a "holy grail" status.

As for your books. They are heavy, a pain to move lots of them, and so very very useful.

But then, I also have a couch that I like stashed at the building because I have no place to put it yet.. and I own other things as well, that border on liabilities rather than assets. A couple of good guns is great, a big collection is a pain. Time to pare the collection down.

Like you (Dan), I am preparing to move, and at some point I will have to ask myself the question, why not dump my necessities in an RV and trash or donate the rest to a worthy person. Hmm.. Gotta work out the financials.. for just me, it might make better sense to do the RV thing, yet a house is a good investment where even a used RV is a poor one. But I could invest that $$ elsewhere. -- Need more mobile bandwidth options. Hmm...

#Comment Re: [Entry #6698] Re: Book Purge made: 2003-11-20 22:25:22.424864+00 by: Dan Lyke

#Comment Random test message made: 2004-02-21 02:38:31.765324+00 by: Dan Lyke