Once I got going on the book purge, it just made sense to keep going... and going, and going... The scary thing about the pile of books in the photo above is that hardly any of them were "hesitation" items — it was very easy to decide they had to go. Not that I didn't enjoy reading them! But I decided to get rid of my mysteries, just because I never re-read them and rarely reference them. The only reason to keep them would be to give them to a friend who wanted to read one.
I did feel bad about getting rid of my back issues of Descant. They were the first magazine I ever had a story published in, and they just announced they're going to cease publication after over forty years (with issue 167). It's just that in an apartment, it's hard to justify having periodicals which, again, I'm not likely to re-read, however much I enjoyed them the first time around.
Despite purging all of these books (and I could probably do some more), that only means that I can now fit all the "overflow" on the shelves. I haven't actually made much new space.
Eeep.