Our house has a lot of bookcases—20, I think— that are used for books. We have another eight holding other stuff, such as tchotchkes and DVDs.

The hubs has a horror of getting rid of books. The hubs and I share a (bad?) habit of buying more despite not having read everything we already own.

As you might guess, “clean out” around here really just means “dust.” It doesn’t mean weed or replace or anything like that. I have, occasionally, found a duplicate copy of something that we’ve hauled off to the used book store, but those have been rare occurrences.

Lately, though, the lack of shelf space—or, more accurately, space to add more shelves—has been bothering me. As I have finished reading things, I have been making a conscious decision whether to put it back on the shelf or drop it in a “Do something else” bin. Nonfiction mostly goes on the shelf. Fiction goes in the bin.

The problem is that I’m not sure what to do with this bin. My local library is small and I know all too well that anything not checked out in two years goes away to a larger library in a larger town up the road—and for all I know, those guys just pulp the stuff. The twice-annual book sake gets rid of some stuff, but a lot more comes in for the sale than goes out.

So here’s another giveaway.  Leave a comment and I’ll send you a gently used book of my choice! Then the shelf-cleaning will be your (non)problem!