Hello! It’s Tuesday again, which means it’s Top Ten Tuesday! Time to talk about books again! Today is a Spring Cleaning Freebie. I decided to talk about books that I may end up spring cleaning, or giving away. It’s amazing how many books a book blogger tends to pile up. I have so many books in my garage, and while I’ll probably want to get rid of some of them eventually too, books seem to multiply in my house as well. I literally only have a shelf in a closet as a formal “bookshelf;” the others are scattered throughout my house. The books on this list are typically books that I’ve read but have no intention of reading again.
1920: The Year of the Six Presidents – David Pietrusza. I learned a lot from this book. It was well written and humorous at times. However, do I think I’ll read it again? Probably not. There are some books, even in the nonfiction genre, that leave me with a feeling of awe and that I must read it again. This one–probably not.
Hanger Management – Susan Albers. This was a book I got for free from Bookish First (thank you). While it was interesting, a lot of the information in here is fairly basic. While there are some health books I don’t plan on getting rid of, like Deep Nutrition, because there’s so much I might want to refer to later, this one is a little too basic for me to hang onto forever.
A History of Wales – John Davies. While I’m glad I read this book, the topic is fairly narrow and I’m unlikely to read it again. I got it at a library book sale. I have so many unread books from library book sales that I have to stop going to those things. Anyway, while I learned a lot, this book isn’t engaging enough for me to keep.
Listen to Your Heart – Kasie West. For today’s list, I’ve been going through my Goodreads profile and have been picking books that I own in physical form. A lot of books I own on Kindle and I’m keeping those, whether I ever plan on reading them again or now. Listen to Your Heart was a good book, but I don’t think it’s one I’m going to read again. It’d be nice to pass this along to someone who would like to read it.
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life – Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. This was another book I got at a library book sale. It’s highly unlikely I’m going to want to read this book again. While some of its findings, like our society can sometimes be a little too complex for some people to navigate through, are interesting, others–like there might be a correlation between race and intelligence–seem a little off to me. Especially as someone who’s married to a black person who’s probably in the top decile of the intelligence scale.
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine – Anne Applebaum. This one I’m a little unsure of. I know I should free up space and donate it, but do I want this as a reference? Maybe? It’s one of those books, like The Great Influenza, that I may want to refer to later. I’ll hold off on this one for now, but I may want to donate this one.
Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times – John Whitney Hall. This is not the edition I have; the one I have has a yellow cover and came out in the 1960s. I found it to be difficult to read and very narrow in scope. Maybe if I knew a lot about Japanese history it would have been easier for me to read, but it wasn’t.
There’s been a lot of talk about “cancelling” older works of media recently, and while I’m not in favor of destroying art, there are some things that just aren’t relevant to today, and need to be viewed through a different lens. As far as I can tell, there isn’t anything sexist or racist about this work, but it is 50 years old, and perhaps that is why I had such difficulty reading it. It’s more interesting, IMO, from a historical perspective than as something useful for today. And perhaps the same is true of these older works that seem to be horribly outdated today.
Stop Missing Your Life – Cory Muscara. While this book was interesting enough, do I really think I’m going to read this again? Probably not. I know there are a ton of nonfiction books on this week’s list–believe it or not, I actually have tons of nonfiction books that I love and will probably never get rid of–but this book isn’t something I’m likely to want to refer to, or read again. Some books you can read, absorb all you’re going to want to get out of it in one reading, and then you’re ready to move on. I think this is one of those books.
Light from Distant Stars – Shawn Smucker. I liked the book, but out of the thousands of books that I could read, do I want to read this again? Probably not. I’d rather pass this on.
My Mother, Barack Obama… – Keven Powell. While I found this book to be interesting and a glimpse into a life that is completely foreign to mine, I’m probably not going to read this one again. I’d rather pass this on to someone that hasn’t read it yet and would like to.
So there’s 10 books I’m thinking of donating. As my books pile up, I’m trying to make use of the library and my Kindle more, which reduces the amount of books I have to donate. There are some books that I’ll hang onto for years, of course, but these tend to be ones that are either signed or that I plan on rereading.
What did you write about today? Are your shelves overflowing like mine? Do you end up bringing home a bag of library books from those sales and find a lot that need to find new homes?
Next week we’re going to talk about our Spring TBRs. I think these are some of my favorite posts.