As the new year has rolled around, and we got plenty of new books for Christmas, it was about time to re-evaluate some of the books on our shelves, and which ones were itching to find new homes via our local charity shop. We wanted to go through some of the reasons we decided to get rid of these books, and questions we’ll now ask ourselves when considering whether a book is worth keeping or not!

Books We Didn’t Like

This is our main reason for getting rid of things, and Looking For Alaska by John Green and The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken fall into this category. Both books got either two or one star rating, so didn’t deserve their position on our shelves! Simple as that!

Books We Haven’t Read and Probably Never Will

I think everyone has a few books like this lurking on their shelves. For us, it was Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz and Wake by Amanda Hocking. These were part of an old ‘try-new-series’ box set, or given to us by our lovely friend Sarah who’d read them and passed them on stating that they weren’t amazing reads. Two years ago, we’d have read them anyway, just in case we could write a negative review (because, you have to admit, they can be the most fun to write!) But, if you’ve seen our resolutions post, you’ll know that reading books we’re not interested in is now a big no-no.

Books We Were Only Keeping Because of the Cover

Some books are just too pretty to get rid of! This was the case of Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira, a book that I didn’t click with but bought solely because the cover was gorgeous. Now I have many other cute covered books that can happily take it’s space!

Series We Don’t Want to Continue With

In the past, we’d have a nasty habit of bulk buying series even if we hadn’t read the first book, and if we didn’t like the first one, then we’d wasted a bunch of money on a series we weren’t going to complete. This is the case with End of Days by Susan Ee. Although Bee has read the series, she didn’t enjoy it, and it’s not one I want to pick up, so to a charity shop it goes! The other big one we’re getting rid of in this category is Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas. It’s no secret that we haven’t got on with the Throne of Glass series, and reading four or five short stories in that world would be Not. Good.

We Have Multiple Copies of This Book

This doesn’t happen often, but Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli is a book I got on my Kindle after getting it for 99p in a charity shop. It was a cute read, and I definitely gave it at least three stars, but our book collection is growing too big to keep duplicates! Like a blind bag repeat, it must go. Similarly, Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins Bee had on her Kindle before we got a physical copy and the cover is just a gross mismatch of everything, that it didn’t feel wrong to get rid of!

So, those are all the reasons we’re getting rid of the books we’ve unhauled! Now for the questions we have to ask ourselves to stop books lingering past their keep-by-date:

1. Do you see yourself re-reading this book?
2. Is it a book that both of us want to read, or only one of us? 
3. Did you give it a rating of two stars or less? 
4. How many times has this book crossed your mind since you read it? 

Hopefully from now on, our book collection will only be filled with books we love, have sentimental attachment to, or want to keep owning, potentially forever and ever! And who knows, maybe we’ll do another re-evaluation of our books later in the year?

Have you ever unhauled a book, or are you too attached to every book you own? If you have, what your most controversial unhaul pick?