Abandoned Books You Own

So you bought a book with every intention and expectation that you'd love it. Or at least enjoy it. Or find some redeeming value in it. But one of the slips between the saucer and the lip turns out to be that you can't stand the book and you ultimately decide it will never be finished -- at least not by you. So, does it remain in your library?

I used to keep them. You couldn't in good conscience share them with someone else and I was way too uneasy with just chucking it. But now I donate them to the Friends of the Library for their annual used book sale. Buyer beware!

I put abandoned books on Bookmooch and also donate to university book sales.

I don't often get around to reading a book until I have someone in mind to give it to, so anything I abandon gets passed on unfinished.

I'm stuck trying to cram all of my 200+ books into a slightly smaller than dorm-sized room -- I actually have a bookcase in the closet -- so I'll periodically go through and purge my collection. Usually ends up reducing the number by at least thirty. Any abandoned books end up donated to the library along with the others. There's really no accounting for taste, so something I hated might be someone else's favorite novel. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

I try to sell my abandoned books to used book stores. Also, I am finding more bookstores selling both new and used, side by side on their shelves. Those stores are where I first go to sell "abandoned".

Not just abandoned books, but also books that I have read but I know I will never read again all go to the nearest charity shop.

I second #6 TheTortoise. Mine go to the library for their sales.

me too, can't read, won't read, or will not read again books go to the books sale for the humane society, bookmooch or someone who might like it. They do not stay with me.

Nope. I'm like TheTortoise; if I'm not going to read it again, it gets passed along.

i give every book a 50-page test (even before i heard of Nancy Pearl..bless her biblioholic heart)...if i can't do that..i set it aside for LATER..if it doesn't survive Later..there is always gasoline-and-a-match...in extreme circumstances...otherwise i...yeah well..burn it

sorry..i tend to be Extreme..so sue me

Ebay, baby!

Right now I still have Saucier's Apprentice by Bob Spitz. So far it is merely ignored and not actually abandoned, though I stopped reading 78 pages into it 2 weeks ago. I'm not quite ready to write it off yet, though if someone were to ask me right now if they could borrow it I'd hand it over without a qualm.

Other than that one all my abandoned books have been sold, traded or donated.

#10 jdthloue - this is the second reference to Nancy Pearl I have read today. Who is she?

I have always taken my books to the Thrift Shop (hundreds and hundreds of them over the years). Last spring I donated 2 bags to the Friends of the Library Sale. Starting a month ago I've started using BookMooch. I still have about 80 books on my shelves that will go to BM in a slow-release program.

There may be books that aren't appropriate to BM, and they will continue to go to FOTL or the Thrift Shop.

darned touchpad! touched twice.

#11 -- hadn't thought about eBay. Wonder if there is a market there for Eat, Pray, Love....

>15 CAGEYM:,
Eat, Pray, Love *still* has a waiting list at the library where I work, so I'd venture a guess that there are still a lot of people out there eager to read the book.

ETA:
In the past, I donated books to the library I worked at. But my current library doesn't accept donations (we're really short on space). So I BookMooch some books, and I take others to the used bookstore.

>13 karenmarie: karenmarie, Nancy Pearl is the author of Book Lust and More Book Lust as well as the head goddess in my personal pantheon. She is a librarian whose research into what books she could and should recommend to patrons led her down many a primrose path, which she documents in her books of recommended reading. She has a website
here that should explain anything you would be mildly curious to know. It is she who popularized the Rule of Fifty, the fairest test of whether or not a particular book is a good fit for a given reader. I have taken to calling it the Pearl Rule. In fact, Mr. Man, my spouse-type-person, and I use it as a verb, too: "Give this a Pearl Rule" when handing over a book is completely understood by us both, and seems to be spreading to my daughter and her husband.

Anything less than a 3-star read goes to Half Price, Goodwill, or someone who will like it if they're lucky enough to swim across my field of vision before one of the first two happens. Any 3-star read that I don't feel like using as a reference, keeping as a loaner for multiple possible fans, or looking at anymore, see above. Four- and the extremely rare five-star works can possibly be pried from my cold, dead fingers several hours after I assume room temperature; I wouldn't bank on the finger-prying individual not being haunted if s/he treats my babies disrespectfully, though.

#17 thank you richardderus! Now I know. And, now I can ignore.

I've always had my own personal rule - read it until I put it down. Works for me.

If I put the book down before it ends, then it stinks or is a book for another time. I immediately know which category a book falls into. Books in the first get gone, books in the second are put back on the shelves for discovery another month or year. If they get tried and put down a second time, out they go. (Based on this rule, I am really going to have to get rid of all my Virginia Woolf - BookMooch sometime soon. She's an author I should have on my shelves, but I am girding my loins. Out she goes, soon.)

If I read a book all the way through then it was worth reading. Maybe just barely, but worth it for whatever reason - typically because one character intrigues me and I want to know what happpened to her or him. Sometimes I read a book just because it's part of a series that I don't want to lose the flow of but don't particularly like that book.

This year is strange because I promised myself to finish everything I started, mostly because of my 888 challenge. This was a bad decision. I've been kicking myself since about February.

I've read some real stinkers this year. (Snow Crash and The Mistress's Daughter immediately come to mind). I have put two books down without finishing them, and am angry at myself for not keeping my promise, but they were just TAFW (too awful for words). Wrist-slitting time. (one was a vampire book - yes, I know - but I do so love vampires! - and one was a book of short stories, an ARC, that were extremely depressing and gray. Everybody else loved the book but I just couldn't stand it.)

Next year will be great - no pressure to finish books I don't want to read. However, for this year, you can bet I'm getting more careful about what I pick up!

>18 karenmarie: karenmarie, that has the elegance of simplicity: "Read it until I put it down." Trouble is, there's that whole Virginia Woolf effect...what of those books whose charms unfold over a longer stretch of time that might feel natural for you as a reader to give the book?

Still, your system sounds like it's working, so I quibble at my own peril. Plus your 888 challenge...well, I will think several times before recommending any books to you this year....

#19 richardderus - you can always recommend books. I'm always open to that! My unofficial TBR is so big that I don't have to buy a single new book to read for many years to come. However, mood, intellectual curiosity, and comfort level drive what gets read when, so new books get bought and mooched. I love having too many books to read in a variety of genres. Plus, I'm reading lots that aren't in my 888 challenge.

f I can't find the charm before boredom, irritation, or outright hate set in, then I'm forcing the issue and taking the pleasure out of the reading. I have been a serious reader since about 3rd grade (47 years ago, which even amazes me). I accept that I'll never read every good book out there and will never read every book I should read.

So you're right, my system works for me. And many times I'll pick a book up months or years later and it's the right time, place, whatever.

Regarding Virginia Woolf, I have tried so many times to read her books and failed, starting in college (37 years ago), that I accept that I'll probably never grok her. I do love the biography of her by Quentin Bell, her nephew, though.

I would love to be able to say that she's one of my favorite authors - it sounds impressive. Alas.

Stranger in a Strange Land... a classic, a favorite I grok that book!

#20> At last, we now know who's afraid of Virginia Woolf.

#21 I was wondering who would catch that, mckait!

#22 *snort*

mckait - what is "grok"? I love the sound of it, define please.

well, emaestra, since I used it in message #20, I'll answer your question with the entry from Wikipedia:

To grok (pronounced /ˈgrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. In Heinlein's view of quantum theory, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed.

As first used in the Heinlein novel Stranger in a Strange Land:

“ Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man. "

I've always used to describe understanding something at the deepest or sincerest level.

> 18 > 19 I want to embrace the "read it until I put it down" idea, but find my reality is that I am often benefitted from some external threshold, such as the Pearl Rule. I did that recently with Pelican Road by Howard Bahr. I've read and enjoyed all of his novels and felt there was great potential in Pelican Road. It started well, but then I bogged down. I finally said I'd push through to page 75 and, of course, by then I was past the sticky spot and raced on through the remainder of the novel. What I realized in restrospect was that the problematic point was not really about the book; it was more about where my mind was at the time. I truly, for several days where I could only read a page or so, wanted to put it aside. I'm so glad that I did not!

To all who're here: I have to say that Virginia Woolf (NO TOUCHSTONE?!?) took some time to become a goddess in my pantheon. I read Mrs. Dalloway when I was 19, and I so totally misunderstood the book that I put Woolf in the "snoozer biddy" category with Anya Seton and Taylor Caldwell. (Touchstones for these ladies, none for ol' Virginny.)

I went back ten years later, during an emotional meltdown time, and suddenly there she was, my goddess Stephen-Woolf. To the Lighthouse was the book I picked up then, and its family of misfits and maladjustments was my reality. The Waves was next, a revelation of simplicity; Orlando was after that; I would that there were new ones to discover.

About the same time, I heard of the 50pp rule, which is now justly called the Pearl Rule; I read Green Darkness because I had a goal of reaching 50pp. It was wonderful. The same rule kept me reading in Dear and Glorious Physician, which to be frank (and one of y'all can be barbra if you want) I still think is kinda pot-boilery, but interestnig enough to read.

So CAGEYM, the Pearl Rule carried me past the "ick" point with Seton and Caldwell; and like karenmarie I needed to be in the right place at the right time; so both methods should always remain available to us biblioholics, neither considered exclusive of the other.

And then there are just some books that stink on ice and should be flung with great force into the shredder and then composted. Like Passage by Connie Willis (hah! no touchstone) and The Sex Lives of the Cannibals by somebody or other.

oh richard, why do you have to rub it in that The Sex Lives of Cannibals is so bad? I'm only 20 pages from the end now, and I almost can't bear it. I don't know if I'll be able to drudge up the motivation to even write a review. Ugh. I wish I had abandoned it long ago.

Here's hoping that my next few reads will be better.

>28 bnbooklady: booklady, they have to be. I mean, unless you're going to read Strike from Space by Phyllis Schlafly (a touchstone for THIS broad and none for Woolf?!) I don't see how you can make it WORSE than it is.

As to your review...I suggest the Robert Benchley method. He wrote annual review lines of Broadway's offerings for the 1920s New Yorker and, since one of the longest-running and most popular plays was called "Abie's Irish Rose," Benchley was forced to write annual reviews of it; his first few were serious. Then, after about year 3 of its run, he'd review "Abie's Irish Rose" by saying things like, "Come on now! A joke's a joke." and "The Phoenicians were an ancient seafaring people, noted for their cuneiform writing style" and the like.

My review of that cannibal ghastliness: "The Kyoto Accord is a multi-national agreement designed to help slow down global warming."

I'll have to consider that...

#29> Benchley's successor at Talk of the Town, Gardner Botsford, used the catchlines for Hello, Dolly and The Fantasticks to serialize Ulysses, one line at a time.

actually I have many. Books that still have bookmarks in them where I stopped reading. It's sad, but true. Maybe some I'll pick up again. I should go in the catalog & tag them so I can see the futility up close.

#27 - To all who're here: I have to say that Virginia Woolf (NO TOUCHSTONE?!?) took some time to become a goddess in my pantheon. I read Mrs. Dalloway when I was 19, and I so totally misunderstood the book that I put Woolf in the "snoozer biddy" category with Anya Seton and Taylor Caldwell. (Touchstones for these ladies, none for ol' Virginny.)

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"snoozer biddy" -- I LOVE that! I hated 'Ginny when I first read her too, but I love her passionately now.

Since I have stopped just lurking and am now actually posting sometimes I have been frustrated that everyone but me seems to know how to create a link to books and authors they reference. From the last few posts it seems that the secret is TOUCHSTONE.

Could someone please tell me what that is and how it works. I would love to be able to send people to the books I love.

BTW I also love Virginia Woolf (and the biography is wonderful!). I like her essays as well as her novels--especially The Second Common Reader.

I am going to put myself to sleep tonight by trying to think of an author I know for whom I could use the term "snoozer" biddy." I really love that!

I love Virginia Woolf.

MusicMom . . . when you post a message, the instructions appear at the right of the text box. Just put square brackets around the title of the work you want to touchstone. Not { or ( but . . . and then at the end the same closing bracket. You use double square brackets for authors, but I find they often don't work so don't bother with them. Somehow they seem to work better for more obscure authors, and not well for well-known authors. Go figure. Hope that helps.

#35 - Yareader, # 34 MusicMom & #27 Richardderus. . . there is a disappointingly quiet Virginia Woolf group here at LT called I Prefer Men to Cauliflowers. I'm up for some conversation there anytime.

I tend to keep most books, whether read, tbr, or abandoned, mainly, I believe, because I enjoy the feeling of being hemmed in by literature. Plus, in the last few years I've moved numerous times and have been forced to shed books at an alarming rate. You'd think I'd be happy about the new shelf space, right? No! Already I've gone looking for a book I knew I had only to come face to face with the stark realization that It Was Gone.

Seriously though, I'm working on passing on books that I won't re-read and that aren't so pretty that I have to keep them. I've already mailed out three through LT, so I'm pretty proud of me.

As for Ms. Woolf, I placed her firmly into that 'snoozer biddy' campe upon reading Mrs. Dalloway back in the day, a placement that has not been challenged by the Angel in the House (I think?) excerpt that I teach in my SAT classes. Blech. However, a friend gave me a copy of Sweetwater (not that one) a few years back because it was illustrated by Edward Gorey and I, surprisingly, rather enjoyed it. I'll give To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando a go one of these days but they're low on my priority list.

It's amazing how many seriously devoted VW fans there.

And of course Kplatypus and me. I've now put VW in the snoozer biddy category. I've found all her stuff on my shelves and will get it onto BookMooch this weekend if I can get organized enough. I Will keep A Room of One's Own - my old copy that I've carted around forever.

I'll post my intention in one of the BM threads.

#32 BookMarque - when I started cataloging my books last October, I literally found a hundred or so post-it notes either in the book (abandoned) or plastered on the back cover (successfully read). I got rid of them all as I cataloged.

There are threads all over the place discussing this, but my preferred bookmark is either a gorgeous, thin wooden one I received from a friend early this year or a post-it note.

Ah me, the vagaries of taste...imagine leaving Virginia Woolf in the snoozer biddy column! Shocking! inconceivable!

I'm glad y'all liked "snoozer biddy" so well. I've been thinking of starting a thread in this forum called "Snoozer Biddies" to evaluate/reevaluate/discuss the various ladies who fit, to some of us, the category. But then....

>37 Nickelini: Nickelini, I had no idea such a thread existed! Can you point to it, please? I am whelmed (not over, not under, just whelmed) at the moment and can't figure out where it is.

>39 karenmarie: karemarie, I shall now join Bookmooch immediately to get in on the VW firesale.

#40 - >37 Nickelini: Nickelini, I had no idea such a thread existed! Can you point to it, please? I am whelmed (not over, not under, just whelmed) at the moment and can't figure out where it is.
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No problem. Go to the Groups page. Near the top right is a link to the Complete Group List. Click on it to get an alphabetical list of all LT groups. The group name again is I Prefer Men to Cauliflowers.

#40 richardderus - I can't wait to see what books you'd put in your inventory! If you're serious, send me a private message. I'll save them for you.

Please create the snoozer biddies thread. Pretty please with sugar on it.

richard: is it possible that "snoozer biddy" is a subcategory of those books/authors generally known as craptastic?

I almost abandoned Mrs. Dalloway but I went to boarding school and have been conditioned to finish what I start whether tedious books or horrible meals. Good thing too, 'cos you adjust to the swirly feeling of Mrs. Dalloway after a while, and it's not bad at all. However, books that I absolutely hate, after reading them I give to unsuspecting friends, and receive regular updates of their suffering. Muah ha ha!

If you start a "snoozer biddy" thread we need to have a term for male authors. Last night the only author I could think of was Philip Roth (of course I fell asleep quickly after staying up too late to watch the Olympics). I know that will bring some protests. I only tried one book of his many years ago--but I tried it three times because it was supposed to be so great. Maybe someone could persuade me to try again on another one?

# 36 Nickelini

Thanks for the information--I'll try it. I think I never noticed it because the print is so light that I had to have my husband read it to me--giving him more ammunition for nagging me to go to the eye doctor!

snoozer coot? snoozer geezer? fogey?

I like snoozer geezer, personally. It's got a nice rhyme to it.

It also seem to work well with snoozer biddy--can't you just imagine the marriage of the geezer and the biddy!

It's a match made in mutual misery and loathing.

I think that geezer biddy and geezer fogey have better balance. But that's just me.

#40 richardderus - I BookMooched the Virginia Woolfs and put a comment in my bio that I'd love for them to all go to the same reader if possible. I got a taker (and 4 points to boot) and mailed them Wednesday. I hope she enjoys them. Somebody should - it's not the poor book's fault that the author is ..... well. 'Nuf said.