SOPHIE LI

Hello everyone!

What, you ask, is an unhaul!?

Well, it is the opposite of a haul. Instead of buying more books, we get rid of some of the books that we already have.

Sounds terrifying!? I KNOW.

For those of you who have been following my blog, you may know that I’ve been talking about doing an unhaul for a while. This past weekend, I decided to roll up my sleeves, puff up my chest, and get down to business. And you know what!?

It was so, SO hard. There were no books that I actively disliked, though there were books that I felt meh about, or even books that I liked that I probably will never read again. Those were the hardest to let go!

However, I did it, and I am so glad that I did 🙂 Here are the books that I am cleaning out of my kitchen cupboard!*

*Which is where my books are located. I know, I’m special 😉

Although I enjoyed these two Nicholas Sparks novels, I really can’t imagine that I will read these again.

I loved the movie for The Silver Linings Play Book (I am a JLaw fan at heart!) however I didn’t enjoy the book as much. When God Was a Rabbit was a book that I read a while ago which I remember nothing about (not a single thing!)

Wicked is another book that I can’t imagine reading again. I bought The Black Swan from the thrift store by mistake, so… back it goes :’)

I picked up The Lives of John Lennon from the lobby in my old apartment building (where people often leave their unwanted things). Yes, I am shameless LOL :’) Although I admire John Lennon’s music, I don’t think I will be reading about his life anytime soon.

The Ash Garden was a gift from a secret admirer back in high school (yes I had this book for a long time!) When I tried to read this book however, I was bored to pieces. I realized that I was hanging onto the idea of… being secretly admired*, rather than the book itself.

* Hey, a secret admirer who is aware of my love for books is hard to come by!

** I did eventually find out the identity of my secret admirer, however, it didn’t work out between us :’) Bygones.

These are my pharmacy-related references and textbooks that I had since I was in school. I remember painstakingly committing each page to memory! I am giving two of these to a coworker (who is studying for her pharmacy exam) and the remaining two to the charity store (because they are hopelessly out of date.)

And that’s it!

I realized a few things as I was cleaning out my bookshelf:

A) I didn’t get rid of as many books as I expected.

B) Which is because I haven’t read most of the books that I own. And of the books that I haven’t read, I am mostly still interested in reading them.

C) Despite this, I keep on buying new books or borrowing books from the library!

D) Isn’t it much better to just read the books that I already have!?

Anyway, here is what my teeny kitchen-cupboard-bookshelf looks like now! I counted ~40 books remaining, which is 80% of my original collection. Quite effective, I’d say 🙂

It is refreshing to see more white space. I am also happy to see that my shelf is no longer cluttered by books that I felt unimpressed by. Instead it is filled with books that I am excited to read or re-read 🙂

Also, I thought that this would be the perfect time to organize my bookshelf, then I had a slight crisis about HOW to organize my bookshelf:

Should I organize by title or author, which makes it easier to find a certain book? But isn’t it more visually appealing to organize by colour? But if I organize by colour, I will be breaking up series. And what if a book spine is more than one colour!?

In the end I organized my books by genre (which is none of the above, LOL.)

Tell me about a time when you had to unhaul your books! Which books were the hardest to let go of? Do you have many unread books on your bookshelf? How do you organize your bookshelf?