I have been in the process of downsizing by donating books to the library, to my former schools, and to the parish for its ongoing "Treasures" room (kind of a continual rummage sale to support the parish). Last year, for example, I donated 329 books. Since I started donating at the time of my retirement four years ago the total is about 1,000 books!
I'm now going through boxes of books I had in storage in the crawl space, and picking out books to donate. I found a lot of Thomas Merton books that I'll never read/reread, for example, so they will soon be heading out the door.
As part of the process I'm also collecting related books scattered across multiple book cases or in boxes stored in closets or the crawl space. I now have one bookcase dedicated to G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. That bookcase features works by them, biographies and autobiographies, and studies of them and their works.
Right now, the tally by author:
Chesterton - 72Lewis - 40
Tolkien - 10
Williams - 11
There was no more room in that bookcase for friends and followers, so I've dedicated a shelf to Hilaire Belloc (5 books), Joseph Pearce (17), and multiple titles by Dale Ahlquist.
Next to my bed, meanwhile, are two small bookcases dedicated to Charles Dickens (13), Haiku poetry (30), and collections of favorite poets such as Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Dante, and Edward Lear (15).
The culling and collating continues.
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