I just spoke with one of my best friends, making plans to do lunch with her and her daughter on MLK Day, and of course we talked about what we've been reading since we last spoke. She mainly reads mysteries (only female authors) these days and will read through a whole series then move on to another. She went through her unread romances some time back and only kept a very few of them, she doesn't keep books (a concept totally alien to me), and has cut back drastically on her book-buying. She's my idol. Of course she has a lot less books than I do so sometimes I feel I should be the one leading by example, not her.
Another friend who is a big romance fan still occasionally buys what she calls "an heir and a spare" books written by favorite authors, one for reading and one for keeping. I think she has more books than I do but though she buys fewer books these days she doesn't get rid of any books; so while my mystery-fan friend has purged her collection, and I'm still buying books BUT I'm also getting rid of some in various ways, I think we both are slightly ahead of the game.
But I have to stop enabling her. Yup, I'm not helping her at all. I hate throwing books away, even if they can go into the recycling (good cause); if I can pass books along to other romance readers I'm happy to do so. One day while we were on the phone I asked her (I'll call her Beverly) if she wanted my Heather Graham Pozzesserre romances and she said she'd take them. I've never really been able to connect with this author so I was happy they went to a good home; I asked Beverly if she wanted my old Stephanie James Desires and she said she'd take them as soon as I got around to that particular box of books. She came to reading romance quite a while after the categories got started so there are a slew of them she hasn't read yet, especially those written by today's best-seller authors like Jayne Ann Krentz and Sandra Brown.
I'm really waiting for the Beverly calls to ask me to help her purge her books. I'm going to be one happy reader - she says she has an OOP, HTF early Tess Gerritsen that even I never connected with. It's the only Gerritsen I haven't read - I guess it does pay to keep books. You never know when you're going to make someone very, very happy.
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