Our daughter was home for Mother’s Day. Yay! Now that she lives back in the States, I encourage her to take her stuff that’s been stored at our home to her home – a  much delayed goal. In the process Heidi identified 6 books that she said were obsolete and should be pitched.

  1. The Best Colleges, the Princeton Review,© 1992. OK this is fair. A lot has changed in colleges in the last 26 years.
  2. Cracking the GRE, the Princeton Review © 2000. Also fair. Anything you needed to know about this graduate school test has probably changed over 18 years.
  3. Real SAT, by The College Board © 1995. Comments on #1 & #2 apply.
  4. The Internet for Dummies © 1994. Since I’m still pretty dumb about the internet, I thought this might be worth keeping for reference but she said it’s obsolete
  5. More Unix for Dummies © 1995. What is Unix anyway? Same answer as #4.
  6. International Thesaurus of Quotations © 1970. I thought this would be worth saving but she pointed out I could find any quote quicker on the internet. OK.

In order to redeem myself I added one obsolete book of my own, Workbook for Lectors © 2015. Although this is the most current of all the books, since the Catholic lectionary repeats every 3 years, there’s no need to keep anything longer than 3 years.

Normally I take used books like this to Friends of the Library or Half Price Books, but since these are all paperbacks and truly obsolete, I suppose just recycling them as paper is easiest.

Why not take this prompt to do a quick scan of your home for obsolete books. Free your books and some space.

I’d love to know what “no longer needed by anyone” books you discover.