[For those of you recently joining me, here’s a link to the first post I made about a book moratorium, and another on the failure of said book moratorium.]

I dropped by the library after work tonight to check out a movie, and of course I couldn’t help but peruse the book-sale rack.

I’ve done this a couple of times in the last few months and have been relieved to find those shelves chock-full of stuff that didn’t interest me. (Which was good.)

But the librarians must have spent their time this week winnowing out the sci-fi and fantasy sections of the library and dropped it all on the shelf before I came in.

I can’t even tell you how many books I picked up (though I will say it had to be close to 40, because I spent over 10 bucks and the paperbacks are only a quarter a piece. I did score a few hard backs.

Sadly, this comes on the heels of a book-buying binge over the weekend.

In 2011, I “officially” purged 227 books from the house. This means they were boxed up and carried away from the premises. This doesn’t count all the books I gave away to relatives and friends.

There are literally hundreds more sitting in bags and boxes in a little room off my kitchen because they’ve (so far) been too much trouble to haul away.

(It’s funny how I find it no problem to bring, say… 40, books into the house one day, but I can’t be bothered to take that many out the next time I leave.)

I think a large part of the problem is the lack of venues for divesting myself of books. The local thrift stores will take them, but not in the quantity I have to give away. The library doesn’t want back the books they sold me – though they’ll take the ones I’ve recently bought. I don’t mind giving them away, but I’d rather not have it be at my expense. (See how complicated it’s getting?)

And I am completely against tossing them in the trash.

I’ve been known to take a box of books on vacation, and then leave them for the next renters…but you can only rid yourself of so many that way.

How do you get rid of your excess tomes?