Is the bell tolling on the paper book or has it already tolled?

The writing has been on the wall for a long time but now it has got personal.

This is an inevitable thing that you face when moving to an apartment from a home, where you literally do not have the room for the books that you have accumulated over the years. This is happening to us now. And I don’t like it one bit.

Here is the reality:

• We are both avid readers and have a huge collection of books
•  Some of our books hold a lot of memories
• Ok, yes I still have some Enid Blyton books from when I was a child
• I have some uni books and school books that I really like a lot
• Gordon has a collection of over 3000 science fiction fantasy books (because he is a nerd .. not really, but that is the only genre that he does read)
• I have my favourites like my Somerset Maugham, Henry Miller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez etc. that I do not want to get rid of
• I have a lot (and I am talking a lot) of cooking books, but they can go, I guess ..
• We have art books, travel books, atlases from our childhoods and dictionaries where the words we use nowadays had not even been thought up

The keeper of the books

These books are comforting to both of us, not just to read but also as reference tools during interminable dinner party debates not that we don’t have an ipad on hand also. The paper books hold memories.

Yes we are both computer geeks and have every apparatus known to modern man, but unlike Gordon I have not succumbed to the e-reader yet; instead I just read all of your blogs, which may or may not be the same.

So the problem

•  We can only take a very limited selection with us
• We have a huge amount to get rid of
• NO ONE wants them

I have spent days ringing every book shop, every bohemian café bookshop that may want Gordon’s very good collection, in particular. I have rung every charity trying to donate to them. They do not want them.

They also do not want toys or videos either. I was annoyed at first thinking, you are a charity – since when did you get so selective. Then it dawned on me. It is people like us who are moving and trying to get rid of our excess goods that have over crowded their facilities.

Donating to overseas developing countries will only apply to any educational books of a certain type, and we don’t have many suitable ones to give.

Schools don’t want them. I know, as every time there was a stock take done in the library, what the kids didn’t take were thrown in the bin for the same reasons as we are facing now.

The Dilemma

I cannot throw them out. It is physically and emotionally impossible, and wrong in my ethical mind.  It is just a waste to send them to the recycling tip.

The solution?

John Donne and Ernest Hemingway both saw the bell tolling. The bell is tolling pretty loud right about now for our books though. There must be another way.

Any ideas?