Are These Old Books Too Ugly To Display?
This might be beat up, but it’s been in my family for over 50 years.
I don’t own as many books as I used to. 25 years ago, my home/apartment was filled with shelves stocked with books of all kinds. Then I started a family. Then we started moving a lot. Then I realized that holding on to too many books was impractical. I knew that I was going to reread only a few of them. Decades later, I’m down to a fraction (I don’t know the precise fraction) of books, and most of them are really old and beat up and kind of ugly.
I like these old ugly books. When we move again, I’ll be willing to pack these books and move them yet again. Yeah, I’ll probably curse and throw a couple fits on moving day/week, but it will be worth it.
Anyway, we just finished repainting the interior of our house, and in order to get the hanging shelves painted, we had to move a bunch of old dusty books. Now we like the shelves without the books. When we put the old books on the newly painted shelves, the books don’t look right. In fact, these old books look downright ugly.
I’m not getting rid of the books, but we might not display them either. In the video below, I talk about several of the old books and why each one is important to me. And I also get mad over the word relevant.
Relevant? It just doesn’t look right.
Dysfunctional Literacy 
I’ve never thought of books having to be color correct for the décor of a room. Put the books on the bookshelf and enjoy looking at them and remembering the stories behind how/why you received/bought them.
“I’ve never thought of books having to be color correct for the décor of a room.”-
Ha! That would make a great video, how to buy books that match the colors of your rooms/shelves.
I can’t make that video, though, because I can only identify six colors.
I agree with Bob and Judy. Put those books on the shelf, especially the one from your nan and face that bad boy out. Old books are just as beautiful as new pristine ones and some more so because if the memories attached.
I agree about the Tom Sawyer book. I think the paint fumes (or the book smelling) got to me when I made this video.
I’m not so sure about that old grammar book, though.
Yeah, I will go with not putting the grammar book out. And we’ll say it was the smell of old books that had you all discombobulated.
Are you saying you don’t like Harry Potter?
If you want to see old books, go to a book sale at the local library, where they usually have on the last day, a bag sale. Fill the bag with books and pay a dollar. You can buy many of the books published within the last dollar for four cents a piece.
I used to do that. I lived in a major city with a huge public library system, and once a year they’d sell their discarded books in a sports arena. Haha! That probably caused half my book clutter problem.