My mother gave away almost all my old books.
She also recycled a few.
... that I'd left at my parents' house, that is. I decided that it might be easier for her to give or throw things away if she saw that I was willing to go first by going through my old books and designating almost all of them to be given away or recycled (my father was running out of toilet paper, after all... kidding! it's for mummy wrappings obviously, just like Sappho and Plato... intertwined around the brainless dessicated remains that they're holding together, like a papery (or papyrusy) hug...).
So out of about 300 books I picked around 25 to keep. Though I could get rid of those as well. I prefer ebooks these days anyway.
First my mother wanted me to put the ones to give away in boxes---done. But then she said she didn't want to give them away in boxes, but in paper bags that would be easier to lift. I suspected that she was coming up with an excuse to put off giving them away, so I put them in paper bags. Then she said she wanted to write down all the titles and whether they're fiction or nonfiction before giving them away. "Do you think I'll be able to tell which they are by looking at them?" (About half of them were either poetry or philosophy, so... both and neither? "I tell you again it don't apply...") I offered to write it all down for her---no, she said, she'll do it. So I was very skeptical that she would actually give them away in a timely fashion.
But lo and behold, she did. Perhaps part of her was hoping I would feel some anguish over losing all those old books. They did bring back some memories---of where I was when I was reading them, what motivated me to buy them and read them... and ultimately to remember why I didn't bother bringing them with me to my apartment, where I have about another 400 books.
My mother also thought my grandparents' old gargantuan multi-volume encyclopedia might be worth money, but it's worthless (except as recycling). And so are old the medical books. Some of the old psychoanalysis books have a bit of resale value, but not enough for us to bother; and various psychoanalytic organizations I reached out to said they're not interested, so we can just donate those too (... where they'll probably end up being recycled---after all, with these tariff-bare shelves we might have some toilet paper shortages coming up...).
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