Saturday, May 2, 2015

How Much Is a Good Book Worth?

Precocious Daughter and I have packed up all of our books.

We have a lot of books.

I know, Kindle, e-reader, blah blah blah.
But, BOOKS.
We both culled our collections pretty severely in the process. It's one of the things you do when you have books. They're like friends, in that some are forever keepers and some outlive their benefit to you and some you must painfully but firmly bid adieu when their time comes. Books, like friends, must be curated to retain their value.

Thank you, you're free to go.

PDaughter is fortunate that her collection contained many books of the Young Adult genre. YA is super-hot. Today's teenagers have a lot of disposable income and a nearly insatiable appetite for stories about vampires, dystopian societies, doomed romances, and cancer. One of these days, some savvy writer is going to concoct a tale about a post-apocalyptic vampire in love with a cancer patient from the wrong side of the tracks and make all the money. The movie series will star Emma Stone and Anton Yelchin. Mark my words.

I got this.
Anyway, PDaughter assembled a couple of boxes of books to sell to Half Price Books. She got a pretty decent amount for them. They included favorites like The Fault in Our Stars, Thirteen Reasons Why, Scat, Holes, Monument 14, and The Secret Garden. Pretty much all guaranteed to sell when put out on the shelves.

All books she was completely willing to part with. With which she was willing to part. Whatever.

And I was fine with her choices. They were her books, so it was her decision to keep or sell them.

I was also really, really fine with the books she adamantly wanted to keep. They included:

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

The Owl and the Pussycat and Other Poems, Edward Lear

The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift

All of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming

My girl.

She's embracing the change that's coming in her life, and she's doing it by affirming and refining the person she is and wants to be.

Goddamn, she's an amazing person.

She's got me reading In Cold Blood now. She said she loved it.

And that's good enough for me.

3 comments:

  1. Proud of you both! Makes my family crazy that I will NOT part with books. Some sort of sick obsession I have. I never re-read them, EVER. Not sure why I can't let them go, but I can't. Maybe I can turn part of our bonus room into a library.... hmmmm..... Good choices to keep, PD!

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  2. I have a handful I'll never ever get rid of, but others I've been given, yeah, they can go. Especially those my hubby's grandmother gives us. 99% of them I will never read. But I also know they will right up someone else's alley.

    Guess it's time to follow your awesome example and go through our collection.

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  3. Her list is awesome. Wish my 18-year-old son would read some of those (voluntarily).

    ReplyDelete

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