How do you Cull the Books

We’re culling the books these days and I keep thinking of King Solomon.

He’s the one who opined long ago, “of the making of books there is no end.”

Of the owning of books there is no end either, or at least it seems that way to me.

After emptying the living room to paint, we’re now refilling the bookshelves and that means we’re going through the books at our house.

We threw away the out-of-date (a 1962 24-volume Encyclopedia Brittanica), passing along the outgrown (art I no longer like), and shaking our heads over the outlandish (“who bought this book?”).

It’s exhausting. After going through three boxes, I now have one empty box, one full box, and piles of books to be reexamined.

27 boxes to go.

What books should I cull?

Some of these books simply stump me. What do I do with 35 years of Bible study materials?

I’ve got notebooks filled with lessons I’ve written and taught, spiral-bound studies filled with ideas, and all the lecture notes from Precepts, Lifelight, BSF, countless IVP studies, and Romans in several different formats.

I wrote my name on the inside front page of all these studies and included the location and date.

To browse the pages returns me to my past: plumeria scent from the Hawai’i studies; efficient organization from the Monterey classes; the realization I’m rebellious at heart from the BSF classes in Washington.

And here’s a dated study in a dull gold notebook: 1970’s Philosophy of Christian Womanhood.

The first month we were married, I joined this study in Orlando, Florida and as a newlywed, got lessons on such topics as “The Male Ego,” “The Man’s Role,” “When Things Go Wrong” and “The Christian Woman Herself.”

I don’t need these ideas anymore.

Why not give them to the church library?

I’m passing along most of the Christian books to our church library.

With all the moving we did over the years, I seldom passed on books that were important to me–for fear I’d never find them again. But we’ve been here 10 years now.

I think I can safely give them to our current church with confidence. They’ll be available if I remember something I need to look up.

My thoughts on some subjects have changed over the years. I’m going to throw away all the Frank Schaeffer books since he’s disowned them himself.

I’m going to pass along the dictionaries. It’s been years since I checked a physical dictionary. It’s much easier to highlight, right click and have the definition appear.

I’m not sure about the Strong’s Concordance–I look up everything on-line these days, but Bible Gateway doesn’t handle word usage as well as I like.

One shelf is easy to keep: comfort novels and books I’ve loved. I’ve got Mary Stewart, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Robert K. Massie, Elisabeth Ogilvie, Eva Ibbotson, Olga Ilyin, and Mary Elgin.

Some of these books are tattered and torn from rereading. A number of spiral-bound copies are out of print.

I’m pleased to have one shelf devoted to books written by friends: Gayle Roper, Sarah Sundin, Jill Eileen Smith, Lynn Vincent, Jane Gangi, Richard Peck.

And now we’re laughing we should reserve a spot for my own books.

“Keep working on filling that shelf,” my husband said this evening.

Culling the books but keeping some “just in case.”

It’s hard to let go, though, of books I love but which I have no use for now. I’m looking at the Solzhenitsyns and wondering if I’ll ever read them.

Shouldn’t I pass them along, then, to someone who will?

But, I think,  someday I may break a leg and need to spend weeks lying down. Shouldn’t I hang on to books to read  just in case I can’t find anything else?

Many of the books currently stacked in the “let’s think about this one” pile may end up back on the shelves.

Sometimes it’s just too hard to say good bye to an old friend.

How do you decide which books to cull? Click to Tweet