Have I mentioned that I might be a tad obsessive?

That first day of book sorting was difficult. The thirty-five I made it through seemed so difficult when I had to choose between stay or go. Yesterday I made it through 72. The rest are anthologies and simply cannot be judged on the first few pages, so I've put them automatically in the keep pile for now to judge each story on it's own merit -- or it's own first few pages at least.

Some I'd already read and it took me a few pages to remember -- and I just gave up and kept all the J.D Robb and Nora Roberts books. (I tried skimming the first few pages on a Nora Roberts since I hadn't read that nom de plume yet, and thankfully I'd started with "The Gift" so I was able to stop once I finished the first short. She is very good at the catching-the-reader part. I must learn that skill.

Ten of the books I kept were J.D. Robb's In Death series. I have almost certainly read a number of them, but the backs have pictures of the author instead of summaries, and the names don't help me much. When I'm looking at books to buy I can see the "In Death" and know it's part of a series I enjoy, but that leaves me with one descriptive word to help me remember the story. Naked in Death is the first. I remember that much. The rest? Holiday, Born, Origin, Loyalty, Memory? (For those that don't recognize the series, it's Naked in Death, Holiday in Death, Born in Death, Origin in Death....) And there are 20-something of them. Maybe thirty-something, by now. In other words, LOTS. I don't remember where I stopped reading. I'd caught up once. Nothing paperback left at the bookstore, but there have probably been several since then. I'm sure I've manically collected several series since the last In Death book I read.

I think I'm going to start there when I get to reading..... No, wait. I'm going to end there so I don't feel the need to go shopping for new series books again. Most of the books on my TBR pile now are single issue, I think. I'm going to start with them.

But I am now done with stage one of the cleaning and culling process and my go-away pile has grown so much there are now stacks in front of the stacks. Husband will have such fun packing them neatly in boxes when local friends are done picking and choosing.

Now, I shall start on the reading. Oh and the writing. I should go back and do some of that too. But now, I can fit all my books on my bookshelves -- AND (and this is important) I can FIND the books I decide to look for. That's pretty cool too.