Y’all know I love my books. They’re cheaper than gadgets (I love them, too) and reveal all kinds of wonderful stuff. My seven-year-old’s book shelves overflowed that I couldn’t straighten it anymore. His shelves were the culmination of Mom’s pre-children collection, big sister’s outgrown collection and big brother’s dumped collection.

He let go of many picture books (Aw, I’m proud since it means he wants to challenge himself with harder reading material) and then I reviewed his 250+ books to see what I wanted to keep. This task scared me as I feared I would hold on to too many. Well, I managed to select no more than 20. Proud of myself. Repeat with older son’s books. Survived again.

Plus it’s summer time. You know what that means? It means I start watching Style, Food Network, Bravo type stuff with shows like Clean House and Hoarders. These also motivated me to dump a lot of stuff. I’m even trying to find a home for my precious Theatre World Annual collectible books. These I won’t just give away.

The local Friends of the Public Library is having its annual book sale this month. Debating whether to go. Do I really need to haul in more books? Of course, it won’t be 100 books — I don’t think I’ve ever bought more than 10 (used much restraint!).

Another openin’, another set of links…

Brain food…

• How to Simplify When You Love Your Stuff: When I came across this the day after the great Snave (read it backwards) book clean of 2010, I knew what to write about in this post.
• “No!” Is a Complete Sentence: Fabulous post from Anne Wayman. Y’all know how it is to say, “No.” But Do you continue on with an explanation or do you stop there? Lori Widmer refers to Anne’s post and adds another important factor — the client’s reaction. Put these two together and you’re golden the next time you need that n-o.
• Winners of Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: “A whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.”
• 5 Reasons to Title Your Art: While focused on artwork, it can apply to many things. When I see “Untitled,” I move on and don’t waste my time with it.  [Link: Marcia Yudkin]
• Ultimate iPhone Apps for Writers: 30+ Productivity and Creativity Boosts: I still use a BlackBerry, but own an iPod Touch. I don’t know that I’d ever want to make the switch to an iPhone because (1) I type faster on hard keyboard than on screen keyboard, and (2) iPhone / iPod Touch has addicting time-wasting apps that having it with me all the time could be harmful to my time management efforts. (I don’t have iPod Touch with me very often.)

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Unbelievable Mosaics: These artists have unbelievable patience.
• Clients from Hell: Hope you don’t recognize anyone here.
• Over 15 Very Funny Posts and Other Links to Make You Laugh About Freelancing: See comments for a few more.
• Time’s Best Blogs of 2010: Lists a few that I love like Cake Wrecks, The Oatmeal and GeekDad. I discovered a few cool ones I hadn’t met like PostSecret, S___ My Kids Ruined, Information Is Beautiful (How did I miss this one when I have this info visualization collection?), Shorpy (Reminds me of browsing through my grandparents’ photo albums… just something about black and white photos from the early 1900s) and more.
• 28 Minimalist Movie Posters: I used to collect Broadway show posters. Actually, having the posters paid off as I held a Broadway-themed party and put them to use. Anyway, enjoy the neat tour of these minimalist movie posters — some excellent and some eh? Love Shawhank Redemption‘s poster.
• Login is not a verb: What do you think?
• Re-imagining four common products from 2010 as if they were designed in 1977: An MP3 player, laptop, mobile phone and handheld video game system. Geeks will love this tour of what a flash from the past would look like had these existed in the ’70s.
• Dream Chronicles: Book of Air (affiliate): Dream Chronicles games consist of breathtaking scenes and lots of challenging puzzles. The cheaper standard edition is out. This could be how I’ll spend some of my weekend especially since it looks like a rainy one.

How do you manage your book collection?