Why is it so hard to give up books?

OK, I'm talking about giving up paperback collections that I've had for years, not giving up reading (that would be terrible).

Since I've had a kindle, and since my wife's been reading on our iPad, we're both very happy with reading digital versions of books. It's partly the ease of reading them on these devices, with their adjustable fonts, and partly the convenience of having your book collection with you on that device. I've also got very used to being able to dip into my collection at read.amazon.com. This has been especially useful when reading non-fiction related to work.

But, all this convenience has made us wonder why we're hanging onto boxes and boxes of books in the loft. These have been boxed into the following authors: Stephen King, Richard Layman, James Patterson, Terry Pratchett, Jeffrey Deaver, 3 boxes of Doctor Who novels, and about 6 boxes of miscellaneous authors. These take up a good amount of space. But why are we keeping hold of them?

Now that I have my kindle, with its dozens of unread books on there, I'm not going to say "hey, I really want to go and read that Rose Madder book Stephen King wrote. I'll just go and fetch it from the loft." The thought would just never enter my head. And I don't fancy bringing them all down into the house and buying a lot of expensive bookshelves, just to display them. I mean, a lot of them are tattered well-read paperbacks that aren't going to look good on a shelf no matter how fancy the shelves are. What I've realised is that despite owning these books, all I own is a load of paper with words printed on it. They're not my books in the sense that I created them; they're just books. The words are always going to be out there if I need them again. If I suddenly have a mad craving to read Rose Madder, I can go down the library, or buy it on Kindle, or buy a second hand copy from Amazon. To be honest, I've no idea what Rose Madder is about - I suspect it's not one of his classics.

It was time to get rid of them.

I hauled them out of the loft and stacked them in the garage. But, since it was coming up to our regular charity day at my work, I thought I'd take some of the better conditioned ones (plenty have never been read) and leave them on a bookcase in our kitchen. The idea has caught a bit of steam and with very little on my part, we've pulled in about £30 for the charity.

But, I can't take them all into work and wait for them to sell - I don't think work would thank me for taking over an office with my boxes of books, so tonight, we've been listing them as job lots on eBay. To be honest, I don't think they'll sell very well, but if they give some joy into someone's life, I'll be happy enough.

My 30 book collection of Stephen King was listed tonight.

My wife's Richard Layman, and James Patterson were also listed.

But when it came to listing my Terry Pratchetts, I hesitated.

I couldn't do it.

Now, I haven't read any of these for about five years. I like Pratchett, but the last time I tried to read one, I struggled. I just wasn't enjoying myself like I used to.

So, why not just get rid of them?

I don't honestly know. It's not really a very good collection as I'm missing plenty of them.

But, somewhere in this mix of pages, is an emotional attachment that pulled at me tonight. I bought my first Pratchett Novel in high school. I remember my friend Dean Pearson showed me his copy of The Colour of Magic in Biology class and telling me how fantastic it was. I remember reading them on caravan holidays. I remember how lost I used to get in them, reading them in less than a day.

Is it these simple memories that are getting in the way?

Anyway, the box of Terry Pratchett books is sitting behind me now, waiting for me to take it back to its home in the loft. They'll sit beside the boxes of Doctor Who novels that aren't going anywhere either.

Meet up with the North West Technical Communicators

I presented my talk at the North West Technical Communicators meet-up this week in Manchester at Madlab. What a fun night that turned out to be.

This was the same talk I gave at Newcastle in June, but the environment couldn't have been more different. Whereas Newcastle was all pretty formal in our Sage headquarters, this was in a charity funded multi-purpose meeting facility. At Newcastle I stood in a fairly large meeting room, with about 40 chairs facing me; at Madlab, I was stood at a large table with 6 others sat around. Looking across the room to the front of the space, I could see through the old shop windows across to the bar outside, where people were enjoying after work drinks - I'm sure they were in a good position to see my slides as well.

So, it felt very much more casual. People were coming and going into the building. Walking past us to get to the more techie area behind my presentation screen - at one point, someone asked if they could raise my presentation screen as it was in danger of falling off the roll.

But it was good. This time around, I wasn't so concerned with the expressions of the audience, and it was casual enough that a couple of people interrupted to make observations - I knew people were listening.

At the end, we all had stuff to talk about. Some of which was sparked off by presentation; some just from wanting to share experiences about life as a technical author.

I'm not sure what I might want to tweak for my final 'performance' in October. Hopefully, I'll get a bit of feedback from some of the attendees this week.

MadLabUK Manchester - Main presentation area