A 2022 Winter Unhaul

At the end of each year for the past couple of years, I've made a deal with myself. I have to get rid of books based on how many I read and buy every year. For example, in 2021, I bought 89 books, but I only read 66. Therefore, I had to get rid of 23 books to make room for the new ones and clear my shelves of titles that I'd never read again. So, I wanted to share this year's round of victims with you.

I took 26 books to my local used bookstore to trade for store credit. Of the 26, the bookstore took 23. Woohoo! I don't think they've ever taken that many at a time before. I'm usually stuck with at least ten or so books that I can't get rid of. (*Stares at the bin of leftover books I still have from 2020 that I need to sell/donate/something.*) But this year, the only ones pictured above that the bookstore didn't take were Beautiful Disaster, We'll Always Have Summer, and The Distance Between Us.

If you recognize the spines here, you'll notice that most of the books I decided to get rid of were contemporary YA romances. I just realized I've outgrown the contemporary YA genre, and I don't think I'll re-read these, even though I enjoyed most of them. I simply don't care about prom, college applications, and the like anymore when I'm working 40 hours a week to pay rent. But anyway, the YA and adult contemporary titles include When Dimple Met Rishi; From Twinkle, With Love; Pushing the Limits; Dare You To; Take Me On; Let's Talk About Love; The Summer I Turned Pretty; It's Not Summer Without You; and Conventionally Yours. The Katie McGarry Pushing the Limits books were hard to get rid of, as Take Me On was signed, but I can't justify keeping them when I know I'll never read them again.

As for sci-fi/fantasy, I mostly have some YA titles that, again, I don't think I'll ever re-read since most of them were three-stars. The books include Wicked Saints (never read), Fairest, Reboot, Rebel, two mass market Supernatural show tie-in books (never read), These Feathered Flames (never read), The Girl the Sea Gave Back, Sweet Venom, Sweet Shadows, Sweet Legacy, Find Me Their Bones, Bring Me Their Hearts, and Stormdancer (never read). I would've kept the Bring Me Their Hearts books, but the publisher changed the covers. I didn't want to keep books that didn't match. I still want to check out book three from the library to finish up the series one day.

I plan on hitting up another local used bookstore to see if they'll take the leftover books I have. If they won't, I'll probably end up just donating the rest. But I'll share some pics once things are actually gone. I also have around half a dozen books I might get rid of from my 2022 reads so far. I've been making my way through my TBR backlist, and since most of them are older titles, I'm not super into the writing styles. I may save those for a summer unhaul, though, to give me more time to think over whether I really want to get rid of them.

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Have you unhauled any books recently? Let me know in the comments below!