Shakespeare is out. Because, I mean, why?? why would you keep books of the plays?
Accountancy textbooks are out.  Because I've been doing this stuff for years.  By now I could write better ones myself.
Unused cookery books are out (Hugh Fearnley Whittingsall, it's not me, it's you),
Travel books are out.  Because most travel books are out of date before you even leave the airport.
Books in translation are out.  Zola, Gorky, Dostoevsky.  Sorry guys, it was good at the time....but you are so heavy
Anything pre 19th century seems to be also doomed if it isn't in the Penguin Metaphysical Poets collection. Especially if it is Scottish. Yep Burns, and  Sir David Lindsay.  I'm looking at you. You should have gone years ago, along with Spenser, and Milton and Dryden.
Anything modern that is I was glad to get to the end of.  Sorry Amis. It will be no consolation to you guys that McEwan and Barnes are staying I know....

Hey how's this for a definition of irony?   I've finally got a bigger house with more room for the book collection, and then decided the books need culled.

I can't go on this way. 
I can't kid myself that I am ever, ever going to re-read this lot before I shuffle off into some Sunset Retirement Home. I can't keep buying more and more bookcases. I can't keep looking at yellowing books and thinking why

The book hoarding started way back.  My dad who was a reader, and a hoarder, encouraged me.  He regularly put up more and more bookshelves for all  my books. Which annoyed my mother no end. And the books became a Bone of Contention, until my dad died (this was unrelated to the Book Wars) and my mum sent all my books down to my flat in London.

When I moved from London to Edinburgh, the books, and several other  boxloads of books read in the interim, moved with me. And in every move, from the flat in Edinburgh to the house in Cheesetown, from Cheesetown to Glasgow, from Glasgow to Cheesetown ever increasing boxloads of books have moved with me.

And then last week that's right, one month after I  moved into the new house, I called a day on it.

If I couldn't see myself re-reading it, it went. How many retirement home residents do you see reading Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis.

Yeah.  Thought not..