Losing Books



I'm thinking about losing some books, cleaning out my bookshelves.

One time I moved, I had to package up 150 boxes of books that I had a massed.  That was 35 years ago.  I've been collecting books and picking up books and just getting books since then.  I don't know how many books that is altogether that I have now but I feel it's a bundle.

I'm looking at books I've been living with for decades. Some I've read, and some are books I've always planned to read later.

We're thinking of moving again, or at least entertaining that possibility, so I'd like to get rid of about half of the books, but I want them to go to good homes. 

Some of the books -- the mass market paperbacks that are easy to come by -- are going to Goodwill, but there are other books that are special. These are the unusual hardbound by authors no one has heard of in 30 or 40 or 50 years, but who meant a lot to me at one time, authors like Thomas Berger (Little Big Man), Harry Crews, and Rudolph Wurlitzer.  And then there are books by writers I loved but will never reread: Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, for instance.  I've got a lot of these books.

If I were still teaching, I would invite my best students in and ask them to take a book or two.

But I'm not teaching and I'm afraid these books won't go where they should.

Any suggestions?