My house is full of bookshelves, all living in a state of rather violent disarray. Hundreds of books that don’t fit on our shelves have been relegated to Rubbermaid boxes in the garage. I’m thinking it’s time to purge. Do I really need Janet Burroway’s What If, which I purchased almost twenty years ago for a college writing class and later used to teach my first creative writing class? Do I really need three copies of The Moviegoer and two copies of A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator?

One way to send your books off to new homes is paperbackswap. Another is bookcrossing. How it works: you print up bookcrossing labels online, leave the book in a public place, and watch the website to see when someone adopts it. (I recently learned that my novel, The Year of Fog, had been “left on top of one the gas pumps at Getty on Sandy Lane” in Warwick, Rhode Island.) If you’re in the Bay Area, you can take the books that Green Apple won’t buy to the Friends of the Public Library at Fort Mason Center: Bldg. D, room #265. Accepting donations Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and sometimes Saturdays, from 10 am to 2 pm. Please call 415-771-3777 ahead of time to make sure a volunteer will be there to help you.

Once you’ve purged, Domino Magazine has an excellent slideshow featuring dozens of ideas for beautiful bookshelves.