Blog: Books to Read, Keep and Donate

When walking into a book store I feel instantly at peace, with the shelves full of possibility. I think this love of reading stemmed from my somewhat solitary childhood. After my parents had moved our family to Scotland from England during my early high school years I found it very difficult to fit in at my new school, leading me to retreat into books. I’m older now, with a wife and two boys of my own, yet there is still something comforting in contemplating all of the places my imagination can go in a stack of new books.

Unfortunately, this has led to a rather large collection of books in varying states of having been read. As you can see from the photographs below, I have quite the library building in my office.

At the same time I have recently been reading a new book on my current obsession, minimalism (The excellent Minimalism by Ryan Nicodemus & Joshua Fields Millburn). This has made me consider that perhaps instead of a large collection of books that in the moment appealed to me and are fated to join the large to be read queue I should instead take a more intentional approach to my collection.

Moving forward it is my intention to allocate books to three piles:

1. To be read.

Then:

1. Book brings me significant value and joy, will be kept in my pared down library, read multiple times and reviewed on this site.
2. Book was not of sufficient interest/quality to merit this and will be donated.

Its my hope that this intentional approach, while leaving me with only a small number of books, will lead to my really loving those that remain.