For those of you who’ve been following my journey through undergrad, grad school, and the job hunt, I have big news: I have been hired for my first librarian position! It’s basically my dream job and I’m crazy excited. Let me know if y’all are interested in hearing more about that and I’ll report back with details in another post.

As psyched as I am to be starting this new position, there is one teeny, tiny drawback. To avoid a hellish commute, I have to move to a new town…which means that I need to do a major overhaul of my personal library. As something of a hoarder/collector, I’ve got hundreds of books and I simply cannot justify bringing them all.

How many books do I have, exactly? Well the answer to that is…I’m too afraid to count. And also I became bored after I reached 500. So, yeah.

David is judging me

Clearly I cannot bring all of those with me, or my movers are going to laugh in my face. There’s only one thing to do: purge the collection. The problem with purging – or more accurately, pruning – my collection is that I haven’t done it in years. Not since the last time I moved, actually. There’s a ton to go through, because apparently I only get rid of books when I move house.

So where should I start? How to decide which books will stay, and which ones will go? So far I’ve decided to either donate or exchange all the books I no longer have any interest in reading and those that I’ve already read but will likely never re-read.

All those Sarah J. Maas books I bought before I lost interest in the series? Yeah, those are going to find a new home at the local secondhand book store. Adios to the Hunger Games series, ciao to the Under the Never Sky trilogy. No hard feelings to those books, but I’ve only got so much room in my new place!

My tattered copies of the Anne of Green Gables series, on the other hand…I will never part with them, no matter how many times I move and how rough they look. I may indulge in a new edition of the series at some point, but those originals are sticking with me ’til death do us part.

So what I want to know is this: when do you get rid of books? How do you decide which ones to get rid of, and where do you bring them? Or are you the rare collector who never gets rid of a single book? Are there any books that you will never get rid of?

Let me know your thoughts on getting rid of books in the comments below!