Every now and again I like to divest myself of any unnecessary bits and pieces that are cluttering up my life, have a spring-clean, if you will.
When I moved into my new flat I had a reduced amount of shelf space, so never got round to putting my large collection of sci-fi paperbacks out. Or rather I got as far as taking them out of their box and piling them up on top of the shelves, but they never got as far as the shelves themselves. And then I decided they looked a mess and put them back in their box, and then I realised that they were just taking up space, I was unlikely to ever read them again, and I should consider getting rid of them.
I initially considered giving them to the Cats Protection shop, which is where most of my worldly goods end up. But then I had a bit of a selfish moment and decided to see if I could realise some of the money invested in them.
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This also gave me the chance to try out Delicious Library, which appeals to the collector/completist in me (a very male thing, yes?). It’s very easy to get completely obsessive with it. After entering all the books (130 or so) which was the original reason to use it, I’m now about two-thirds of the way through cataloguing my CD collection (181 so far!). What would be good is if it enabled you to upload some kind of web-page with your collection displayed (in a similar way to the way the application shows it?) – after all, half the fun is showing off to other people about how many CDs or books you’ve got, or the quality of your collection.
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I offered the 130 books out to any of my friends who I thought might be interested, at £1 a book or £50 the lot. Quite a bargain, I thought. And I now have a taker, so the weekend after next I’ll be making the journey to London to divest myself of these unneeded items. I hope it won’t be too traumatic.