palette

First, I always try to buy them from eBay or some other used book website. And I look for those that don't actually focus on hotels and current restaurants because all of that can be found on the web. Centuries-old buildings are going to have the same write up from one year to the next so obviously I keep them! As a trade-off, I donate my fiction to the library so I can have room for my travel books.

mikemo

Those that are not worn out, I donate to local Greyhound Rescue.
Also, all my once read fiction stuff goes there also.
M

Beatchick

Since I've generally stayed mostly in Paris I keep my travel books. Like Sheila, Kavey & others I just put up more bookshelves! I actually just bought a cute little bookshelf I keep in my room just for the sole purpose of travel books. Some of these books like the Thirza Vallois series & her Romantic Paris book are worthy just to keep on their own to reread. I figure even if some of the info is outdated the chances are the restaurants & hotels will still be there & I'll want to see/go/stay there in the future and I'll want these books to reference.

Beatchick

To answer Jackie_in_Italy, I have never been to Italy or Ireland but I have several books that I keep & read & pore over so that I can dream about going to those places!!

Elizabeth

I am a bad & impulsive travel book shopper. I feel comfortable blaming this entirely on the fact that I walk home from work past (well, almost past) at least 3 giant bookstores, so I am not at all responsible for these full-retail-price impulse purchses.

I buy books on places I am not sure I am going to. I have at least 20 current books about London, which I don't regret. I like to read them and make lists. I only carry restaurant & shopping guides with me and one small guidebook.

I love my books to death - I crack open their spines so I can read them on a restaurant table, I write all over them, I tear out pages and tape them back in. Sometimes I index-tab them - easy to overdo this type of thing though.

I am lucky re: storage in that my work situation involves a waiting room, so I furnish the waiting room with bookcases and put the not-in-use books there where other people can look at them too.

I go through them from time to time - when I need space - and toss the old ones as I wouldn't base planning on an old book. Unless the books have become souvenirs of trips, which some of them
do.

mikemo

As an aside, my dear lady friend just bought the next door house of long time friends here in the "hot" Bluffview area of Dallas.
He was a former Braniff A/L Capt and both were in their mid 90's.
They had not thrown any books, mail or newspapers out since 1952. One could not walk in the hallways which were piled to the ceilings with junk.
Psychotic, yes, but...
M

obxgirl

Mikemo, Sounds like my inlaws. Yikes. What a fire trap!

If my standard travel editions (Fodors etc.) are more than 3 or so years old, I donate them to the library. The hotel & restaurant info goes stale so quickly. That's what I find so great about this site...current data!

Daisy54

I'm in the group that advocates increasing the shelving and keeping the travel guides, even the ones I have of places I may never return to. Now my daughter has been watching a lot of these organization shows on the Home & Garden Network and says they recommend getting rid of any travel guide more than a year old. Not me! I may want to look at it again someday. Just gotta keep in mind that the prices quoted will become obsolete - sometimes even when the book is newly published.

But if you absolutely must cull your bookshelves, I suggest donating them to your local public library for their fund raising sales. I'm sure they could all use the support.

allisonm

We don't travel as much as many of you, but I have been keeping my Fodors and Eyewitness Guides etc. I find that I use them more for sites/geography than restaurants and hotels, since we tend to stay more at B&B and eat in pubs. I ordered a new B&B guide from the Irish Tourist Board and will will be looking for a new travel book for our upcoming Ireland trip, even though this will be our fourth trip!

cigalechanta

My place is very small but worse little wall space so that furniture is limited to where it's moved. It's only three rooms and a kitchenette so books are stacked on the staircase or sit under lamps and objects. Once a year I go through them and sell what they will take for money for my next trip ; the rest I donate for an animal shelter flea market and a woman's shelter.
I keep most of my favorites and autographed ones.