Should I sell a rare, beloved but never read book?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:18:09 GMT

Decades ago, when I was a mere media student with dreams of doing something great, I used to stare lovingly at a huge coffee table book about the work of Industrial Light & Magic. Then one day, I saw it on sale at a discount bookshop, and grabbed it immediately despite being a poor student (though obviously not THAT poor if I could afford to waste it on a discounted heavy coffee table book).

Then for the next two decades, it’d follow me from room to flat to flat, down to London, across to Cardiff, North Wales, Manchester, and then back to London. And each time I struggled to lift the box that I’d put that book in, I’d curse its heaviness before eventually finding a place on a heaving bookshelf. Where it would stay, dusty and unread but peripherally loved, until the next move.

Earlier this year, in an Hyperbole-and-a-Half-style attempt at rationalising bits of my life and sorting stuff out, I listed it (amongst many many other things) on Amazon for sale.

Now someone’s bought it for £60 or so. And I’m sitting here putting off the decision to box and ship it, mostly because I don’t want to let it go, for purely selfish reasons. I’m never going to get round to reading it – the best I’ll do is coo at the pretty pictures. But it’s a huge hard heavy book, and really it ought to go to someone who’s willing to pay out £60 for it.

But I haven’t sent it yet. And now I’m getting nagging emails about it.

What would you do?

Mirrored from almost witty.

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Not a book geek, alas

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:10:19 GMT

There’s this Facebook/Livejournal/blog meme passed to me from aamused, kiri (and no doubt others), saying:

“The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.”

(Note that the BBC’s own list of the top 100 books as voted for by the British public are very different to what you see below)

Alas, it’s going to be a tough one for me to fill out, since the pleasure of books is something I seem to have lost as the years have gone by, thanks to my lack of an attention span. Time was, I could start a book at 9pm, and finish it only to realise it was dawn outside and it was 5am. Nowadays, I glance at my watch when watching a sitcom…

But here goes with the book meme, and the list of books I have/haven’t read…

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Mirrored from almost witty.

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almostwitty

Should I sell a rare, beloved but never read book?

Not a book geek, alas