No, I’m not referring to Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor Who (although he was bloody excellent, despite being annoyingly young).

Rather I’m referring to my own ongoing quest to attempt to rehabilitate myself as a sane, productive, and reasonably well-balanced member of society.
(It’s slow going).

To that end however, I’ve just done something that is quite a big step, and that people who have known me for a long time will find very difficult to believe: I am *getting rid of books*.

For many years I’ve lived with the firm belief that there is no such thing as Too Many Books. However, recent events have made clear to me that while that remains true, there is such a thing as Too Many Books In a Small One-bedroomed Flat with Limited Wall Space.

Hence this weekend has been spent sorting through books, DVDs and CDs to sort out The Ones That Will Remain from The Ones That Can Go.

Here’s the current pile of books & stuff that have been selected as surplus to requirements:

Some will go to friends; others sold on eBay; the majority to charity.
However, given the amount of stuff I am letting go, I’m slightly miffed to discover after tidying up the remainder that the amount of shelf-space I seem to have freed up as a result is roughly speaking this much:

i.e. about 22cm of space (!)
Clearly, it seems my books have the ability to expand to fill the space available. Which is clever of them, but not quite what I had in mind when it came to the purpose of decluttering…

PS For those keeping count:Delicious Library book count before pruning: 2,167
Delicious Library book count after pruning: 1,964