The Weight I Carry With These Books Is More Mental Than Physical

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a sentimental idiot.  This is getting in the way of my getting started on the moving thing.  I have a huge collection of books that I need to get rid of - either by selling them or giving them away - and I'm having a dickens of a time letting go of a lot of them.  There's a few reasons for this:

• Some of them make me look smart.
• Some of them I actually love.
• Some of them I shared adventures in Europe with (i.e. Dracula, even though I hated that book).
• Some of them were gifts.
• Some of them I read in college for classes I loved.

This last category is actually a pile of its own.  There's no real reason for me to keep these except for the fact that they make me look academic.  Out of date in the circles of academia, but academic just the same.

A quick and dirty count says I'm definitely parting with about 70 books.  But there are about 60 in the pile that I'm keeping for sure.  Counting these college books, the number of keeps outnumber the others by a few.

THE GIVE PILE 

My goal is to get it to be more 70% sell and 30% keep.  I'm about to do another run through of the keep pile before I start boxing everything.

THE KEEP PILE

At least I know that I'll be able to get rid of the bookshelf they were all on.  Two people have already put in for it.  I'm giving it, along with most of my other furniture, away so I don't have to worry about storing it or transporting it.  It's weird, since I'm so open on most things on the internet, but I don't trust Craigslist.  I'd rather my friends and peeps get my stuff.

Though I have decided, to keep this mess from happening again, that I'm finally going to bite the bullet and get an eReader.  With the Borders in Chicago (and, to a lesser extent, in other cities) bidding adieu, their Kobo with wi-fi is priced a little over $80.00.  I consider it an investment since eBooks are cheaper and I'll be able to get through more of them since, unlike a lot of books, that thing is always portably the same size.

At least that's how I'm justifying the expense.  Maybe selling my books, I can recoup this cost anyway.  If I can figure out enough to sell.