The Bookshelf Project

This is my bookshelf. Some of the books here are old favorites, spines broken and dog-eared to within an inch of their lives. Some are new acquaintances, still settling in and mostly intact. Others are potential friends I haven’t met yet, purchased in excitement and then left to languish as life had other plans for my spare time.

I ended 2016 in a minimalist mood, and so too does 2017 begin. Which leads me to The Bookshelf Project. My goal for this year is to read through this bookshelf and determine which books should stay, which should move on to a new happy home and which should have a place on my new Kindle Paper White (happy birthday to me!).

The Rules

1. Workbooks, cookbooks, maps, duplicates and craft books are exempt from The Bookshelf Project.
2. All other books (149 by my count) will be read through in the order they appear on the shelf (alphabetically by author, divided into fiction and non-fiction sections).
3. Outside reading is allowed, but the goal is to finish the bookshelf by December 31, 2017
4. I will report on books as I read them with a determination of their fate.
5. Other rules will be added as I think of them.

Before you ask

I love physical books, I truly do. I love the smell, the feel and being able to look at a line up of spines neatly arranged on a shelf. What I don’t love is hauling books around. With 16 moves in 15 years, you can understand how I might be fed up with moving boxes of books up and down stairs. The project isn’t about getting rid of books, necessarily. It’s about bestirring myself to really examine my collection, read the ones I haven’t and determine which are important enough to me to carry up and down stairs over and over again.

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