SORTING ALGORITHM NEEDED

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ok. i just got a job that requires me to move about 500 miles. i am too cheap for moving truck, and don't have much storage space where i am going anyway. so i need to chop down my book collection down to about 25% of what it is right now!

ideas pls on how best to do this / horror stories + commiseration also helpful - i really feel like the nursery is burning down and i'm having to pick which babies to save from the flames.

ironically, the job is going to be managing a bookstore.

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:42 (twenty years ago)

i am going to try "pick one, trash three" for a little bit but i don't think it's going to work. right now i am barely capable of "pick three, trash one".

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

Get rid of the ones that are easily replaceable? Sell them on ebay or amazon or something and then use the money to buy them back once you get wherever you're going. If you still want them, that is.

― pr00de, where's my car? (pr00de), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:48 (twenty years ago)

ok here is my pitiful attempt to weed out one bookshelf:

KEEPING:

peter wollen: "paris / manahattan", "paris / hollywood"
thames + hudson "art since 1960"
manny farber "negative space"
sontag "on photography"
5 volumes of routledge critical theory set
frantz fanon "wretched of the earth"
barthes "mythologies", "image music text", "elements of semiology"
debord "society of spectacle"
foucault essential works in three volumes
best + kellner's "postmodern theory"
abrams "glossary of lit terms"
eco "semiotics + philosophy of language"
an anthology on aesthetics

THROWING OUT

john gray "al qaeda and what it means to be modern"
descartes "discourse on method"
angela davis "women, race + class"
michel de certaeau "practice of everyday life"
hardt + negri "empire"

OK WHAT AM I DOING WRONG HERE?

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:49 (twenty years ago)

and voices on my head are saying "you know, you should hold on to that angela davis book because she lives right down the road and maybe you'll bump into her at a coffeeshop or maybe you'll want to audit one of her lectures or or or..."

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:51 (twenty years ago)

Then you should be able to pick up the book again fairly easily after you move, no? Unless you have notes in the edition you have now that you'd like to keep...

― pr00de, where's my car? (pr00de), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:53 (twenty years ago)

well, yes, but EVERYTHING is easily replaceable - i'm not into 1sts and signed copies and things ... well, i have a handmade w burroughs book called "painting + guns" but even that was in an edition of 1000 or something...

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 18:56 (twenty years ago)

When I moved across country and wanted to get rid of at least some of my collection (turned out to be about 25%) I wound up giving most of them away to friends at the goodbye party and leaving the rest out for homeless folks. Mostly I picked easily replaceable things (bye bye "Leaves of Grass") and things which I didn't, technically, enjoy (so long, "Infinite Jest" in hardcover).

Anyway throwing out? Surely giving or selling would be better...

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 8 September 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

Supposedly, Mithridates ate a bit of poison every day in order to acquire immunity. Culling books from one's library is suceptible to a similar strategy. I am sorry you'll have to swallow such a large dose on such a short notice.

In fiction, ditch anything you have never read, unless you'll read it within two months of today. Then get rid of all the once-read paperback novels, unless they are unusually obscure and hard to replace. Then ditch the hardback fiction you can't imagine sitting down right this minute and re-reading avidly.

In non-fiction, only keep the ones that would cost more than $10 to replace. If that's too lenient, up the ante and cull again.

And if you feel unduly remorseful in a month, don't complain to me. I'm just giving the orders here.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 8 September 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

Anyway throwing out? Surely giving or selling would be better...

-- Casuistry (chri...), September 8th, 2005 1:18 PM. (Chris Piuma)

haha "throwing out" = "boxes in parents attic"!!

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 22:04 (twenty years ago)

thanks for teh advice, Aimless! i am actually sort of perversely looking forward to getting home and making some deeper and stricter cuts ...

my room for the last five or so years has been a bed, a dresser, a stereo and five bookcases - the books ring the room and sort of isolate me from the world ... like the mattresses in a gangster safehouse or something.

it will be interesting to live without the "insulation" of a huge library for awhile.

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 8 September 2005 23:58 (twenty years ago)

those sound like good rules, aimless, except for the non-fiction! i would bump it up to maybe $15 or even $20; personally i would have to spend a long time waiting to replace some of my academic-leaning stuff with used copies as it's not old enough or famous enough in the right combination.

but i would hoard a small nucleus of fiction, a lot of it only partly-read.

the party giveaway is a grand idea too.

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 9 September 2005 03:10 (twenty years ago)

the main thing i'd ditch would be novels i'm not planning to read again. and then: nonfiction that seems somewhat common but i can't imagine reaching for and using for recerence anytime soon -- i.e. easinly obtainable through good interlibrary loan, and probably should have been borrowed from there instead of bought in the first place.

book rate shipping only costs 10$ish a box or so, i think though. i've lived in small apartments with still-packed stuff stashed around for yrs. before moving into my current abode which finally has enough space to hold it all properly.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:05 (twenty years ago)

yeah "media mail" shipping goes up to like $22 for 70 pounds, it's a great deal but you better invest in some serious strong boxes and packing tape and peanuts (or just as the local store for their ingram boxes) because i swear they throw that shit off of moving trucks and stuff, it gets banged-up like you wouldn't believe.

also since it's "media mail" you could use it to send boxes of CDs and DVDs.

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:25 (twenty years ago)

If it's just going into your parents' attic, then put everything there that you have already read and aren't likely to reread soon. Label the boxes well, so that your parents can ship them to you if you feel the jones for something specific. Also, catalog them quickly with that librarything website! ;-)

I UPS Ground shipped my books when I moved cross-country, it was not so bad.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:27 (twenty years ago)

yeah i mainly ended up just grabbing the books that i want to blog about, the books that have serious personal meaning to me, books that are reminiscent of the novel i want to write, books that i imagine informing my (eventual) studies in higher education (if that happens), the critical anthologies that i run to whenever someone on ILE says something smart (or i want to say something smart), the expensive nonfiction, "sets" (things w/ matching spines like my set of NYRB paperbacks), and books by presses in questionable financial shape (like all of my farrar/strauss/giroux and black sparrow and verso volumes)

i got it down to 3 ingram boxes (i think they are like 12x18x10"), which i am pretty proud of! not quite my goal of 1/4, but definitely 1/2 or maybe even 1/3

now ... should i take my cookbooks? art books? back issues of artforum? back issues of arena homme? japanese vogue collection?

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:38 (twenty years ago)

i have a friend (not naming names) who is moving to london, she has to leave behind her collection (1991-1998) of THE FACE and i-D back issues ... i really feel for her!

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:39 (twenty years ago)

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=libraryfactsheet&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=75744

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Friday, 9 September 2005 15:29 (twenty years ago)

what's an ingram box? sounds useful.

― W i l l (common_person), Friday, 9 September 2005 20:53 (twenty years ago)

I totally regret having ditched 99% of my collection when I moved continents. Here is what you should do: Chuck out the non-fiction, keep ALL of the fiction you actually read cover to cover. Non-fiction deteriorates over time anyway.

― Jason Gonzales, Saturday, 10 September 2005 16:07 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure what an ingram box is, but I think there is a major library vendor named Ingram.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 10 September 2005 22:50 (twenty years ago)

yeah ingram is the biggest wholesaler of new books in the country - they just use really sturdy singlewall boxes (45 lb edge test!) that are an ideal size for books.

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 11 September 2005 00:51 (twenty years ago)

What nonfiction are you reading, that expires so quickly?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 11 September 2005 00:52 (twenty years ago)

okay so i managed to weed out about 2/3 of the collection using the rules here. which was pretty good, not quite my goal of only taking 1/4 of my books, but close.

the problem was, the selection rules y'all outlined ended up w/ me tossing almost all of my trade paperback fiction and pocket books. this left me w/ a bigass stack of critical anthologies, textbooks, art reference books, cookbooks, etc. (and i even pulled out all of the obvious shit that i could get off the internet, like thesaurus and dictionary)

so it was only like 4 boxes, and each box only had like 20 books in it, but it came out to something like 300 pounds!!

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 18:40 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

I spent the day sorting/boxing/discarding books - 15 boxes packed and 5 overflowing grocery bags dropped off at the Friends of the Library. That was just the dining room :(

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 18:08 (nineteen years ago)

i gotta say, whoever says get rid of paperback fiction before hardback fiction is totally on a hiding to nothing

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 01:11 (nineteen years ago)

I'm on a tear to get rid of all the fiction, except the truly rare stuff. But Mr. Jaq has rescued some of it. This is our new system: One of us (it doesn't matter which, but I seem to be culling more than he is) goes through a shelf, logging the books to keep in LibraryThing and packing them immediately while setting aside the books that are potential discards. The other of us goes through the stack of potential discards and rescues those that can not be parted with. These are logged and packed, the discards are removed from the database (if they were there) and taken to the donation bin the next day.

I think we will pare down enough to get rid of 6 or 7 smaller bookshelves too.

― Jaq (Jaq), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 01:33 (nineteen years ago)

four years pass...

threw all this away except the first three. jeez, how embarrassing.

― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Thursday, 18 August 2011 17:43 (fourteen years ago)

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