✨ Welcome back to another week of LTB! ✨
Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits and myself! In this discussion meme, participants get to talk about certain topics, share opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! Learn more about LTB, past topics and future topics HERE.
This week’s topic is:
Digital vs Physical Decluttering
Prompts: How do you manage your digital library (Kindle, Kobo, etc.)—do you delete books you won’t read, or do you let them pile up? Do you feel less guilty about owning too many digital books versus physical ones? Which is harder to let go of: a well-loved physical book or a purchased e-book?
When it comes to managing my Kindle library, I guess the easy answer here is that I really don’t—or at least, I haven’t to date. 😅 The thing with owning a digital library is that it’s easy to forget what books I have and how many books I have. I’m no stranger to the one-click purchases and I also tend to get very click-happy with 99p deals, so I’m very good at ignoring the digital pile up that would otherwise be wildly overwhelming to me. Not seeing the digital pile grow definitely makes it a lot easier to feel less guilty about the number of ebooks I own. I also have to admit that I’ve enver actually thought about getting rid of ebooks that I previosuly bought but have no interest in reading anymore—I actually didn’t nkow you could do that because where does the book go? It’s just… Gone? 😂
Honestly though, I’ve been thinking more and more lately about doing a clean up of my Kindle library. I don’t know if it’s just me not trying hard enough at it, but I wish that it was easier to organize what’s on my library! I find the interface on the device painfully slow and I find the website equally frustrating. So, I’d definitely love to know if you do organize your Kindle library! How do you do it and do you sort your books out regularly? Please spill the tea so I can start doing the same!
Of course, it’s so different with my physical books. You can’t exactly ignore them when they’re right in front of your face every day, lol. With book stacks spread here-there-and-everywhere around my room (…and house), the guilt does niggle at me more. This piling up tends to happen towards the end of the year after I’ve continued to stuff my already overflowing shelves with new books without decluttering from the previous year. I try to make a habit of doing a yearly shelf reset where I basically overhaul my shelves, and remove all the books I won’t re-read or no longer have an interest in reading, but I feel like I’ve gotten worse at this over the apst couple of years! 😂 That said, even though it’s technically easier to sort through my physical stacks/shelf, I don’t think it makes it easier for me to let go of books. This is especially true for books that I haven’t read yet but have partially lost interest in them, but there’s always a voice in the back of my brain saying “but what if?”
Don’t forget to check out the other bloggers who joined the discussion this week! 👇🏽
Rachael @ The Green Tea Librarian
Tasya @ The Literary Huntress
Elle @ Unwrapping Words
Nicky @ The Bibliophibian
Lee @ Callie’s Tales
Emma @ Pages of Emma
Veros @ Dark Shelf of Wonders
If I’ve missed your post this week, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments, and I’ll add you to this week’s list of community posts ASAP!
What about you, friends? Do you find it easier to organize or declutter your digital or physical shelves? Do you find it easier to let go of digital or physical books or neither?
If I don’t physically see something, I completely forget it exists so I’m always a little surprised when I see the books on my Kindle library haha.
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1000% yes 😂
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I’m right there with you on being lost about how to organize my Kindle app and my Nook app. I think the only thing causes me to delete a book (I don’t know exactly where the book goes) is if I keep coming across one that I haven’t read and I keep not reading while I’m actually looking for one I want to read.
This is my first time joining the discussion, so here is my link: https://www.bemusedandbookish.net/bookish/lets-talk-bookish-digital-versus-physical-decluttering
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I remember finding the Kindle interface horrible! Kobo does an amount of auto-sorting, like right now it’s showing me all the books I own but haven’t read yet by a particular author, which is handy… so since there’s that and search, who’s got time for trying to organise things?! Ahaha.
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All hail the search function! I literally would not be able to use my device optimally without it and all the books on my digital shelf would stay lost in the deep trenches of digital stacks forever. 🤭
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I recently went through my Kindle and deleted quite a few ebooks. But that’s just on the device itself. So if I decide I want to read them I can just download again.
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Fair! I always forget that there’s a distinction between deleting on the Kindle device only and deleting forever because I so rarely do it. 🤭
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There have been so many times that I’ve rebought books because I wanted to read them again after getting rid of them😳I have to be fairly ruthless though as I just don’t have space for all my books
I have gone through my kindle library a couple of times too and got rid of books that I know I’ll never read again. I’ve done it through the Amazon site where it’s quite straightforward to just delete titles you don’t want
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I think I am like you. I don’t touch my cloud. I will delete a book from my Kindle after I read it though, since you know I don’t re-read.
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My digital library is like a black hole. It is where books go to languish and die. lol. I pick up tons of them during sales and then forget I have them. It’s a mess. My physical library isn’t much better, but I do at least attempt some sorting of those shelves/stacks, mostly because I have to look at them. They make me anxious if they get too out of control. 🫠
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I’ve had some sort of ebook since the Sony launched theirs about 20 years ago. I also had a problem with clicking on any free title available for many, many years. That being said, I don’t know that I’ve ever deleted a book. I lost a lot from my Sony because of formatting issues.
About 8ish years ago I started making collections on my Kindle for my favorite authors and books I am super excited about so, at the very least, I can find those easily. I also have a collection for my ARCs to keep better track of those. Other than that, it’s a mess!
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[…] Let’s Talk Bookish: Digital vs Physical Decluttering […]
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Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about the ‘not seeing the digital pile grow’ making it really easy to ignore. Digital books are very out of sight, out of mind for me unless they’re borrowed from the library because then they have a ticking clock attacked to it. 😂
Speaking of physical decluttering…I do have piles everywhere and even books inside bags BESIDE the bookshelves as if like they’re in the general area that means they’re basically on the shelf…I really need to organize that.
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