By now, everyone has heard of Marie Kondo and her show Tidying Up, right? There was an uproar in the book community after the show aired because she recommended only keeping 30 books. Just 30! A lot of us bookworms though that was crazy. She later amended that you should keep them if they bring you joy. But still. 30 books!
In other news, I’m taking part in the Bookending Spring 2019 event, and this is my first post! I’ll be doing some hosting later this month, but I’m also going to try to fit in some of the other prompts between now and then. Originally, I chose this one because I thought it would be fun, but it turned out to be much harder than I thought.
This post’s prompt was originally created by AJ @ For the Love of Diversity in Books! However, Sam @ Fictionally Sam has taken over hosting for the next four days. Check out her original post here! Check out @bookend_events on Twitter to keep up on all the event happenings and join in Twitter chats on Saturdays!
30 Books I’d Keep for Marie Kondo
Here’s the original prompt: Hailey in Bookland did this in her channel and I think it’d be fun to do it as well, because we love de-cluttering books not worthy of space in our shelves. 
So list out thirty books that you would keep if you were Marie Kondo!
So, without further ado, here’s my attempt at narrowing my books to 30.
- Harry Potter series (7 books): Maybe cliche, but I don’t think I could ever get rid of my Harry Potter books. It would probably be hard enough to select just one of the editions to keep (I have so many). Yes, this takes up a lot of space, but it would be totally worth it.
- Everything by Patrick Ness (8 books): Patrick Ness is absolutely one of my all-time favorite authors and I don’t think I could get rid of any of his books. Like, my next tattoo is definitely going to be from one of his books. If you haven’t read them DO IT NOW. (Also I’m already half-way to 30. Oops).
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: Speaking of tattoos, I already have a tattoo for this book! I actually have a Harry Potter one too. But! This book had a profound impact on my life as a teenager and I don’t think I could part with it.
- The Hunger Games Trilogy (3 books): I’m going to talk about this series in my Instagram post today too, but I just loved these books. They heavily influenced what I studied for MA degree, and I’ve read them countless times. There are lots of great YA dystopias out there now because of the popularity of this series (now we’re at 19. AHHH).
- The Saga series (9 books): Maybe this is too long of a series to include, but I don’t care. I have to have some comics in my house, and since Spider-Man is way too long, this will do. I mean, this series is amazing anyway and if you haven’t read it, you definitely should.
- Carry On by Rainbow Rowell: In all honesty, I’d like to keep all her books too but now I don’t have the room. This is one of my favorites, and since it’s a standalone for the moment, it can stay!
- Every Day by David Levithan: When this book first came out, I stayed up all night finishing it. I couldn’t put it down. We’re not going to talk about how the movie was kind of a disappointment, so I’ll just stick to re-reading the book.
That’s 30! I feel like so many books are missing. But, that’s why I definitely will not be sticking to this rule when it comes to my books.
OMG YES TO YOUR LIST AMANDA!!!!! I literally wept inside when I realized I was half way to thirty books and still had a mountain of books I wanted to keep! HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY?! Those are gems and I swear they will go down in history as a classic. Just gold.
I haven’t read Carry-on yet (which doesn’t make sense to me, because Fangirl is one of my top 10 favorite books) and the only Patrick Ness book I’ve read is A Monster Calls, which had me emotionally compromised for many hours. If I wanted to read another work from him, which do you think I should go into first?
Right? 30 books seems like a lot until you add in all the series that you want to keep. Haha. I need more space! Especially because they keep killing us by coming out with new, gorgeous editions of books. How can I resist?!?
The sequel to Carry On is coming out this fall, so if you wait to read it, you won’t be left with as much of a cliff hanger (which was planned all along, I’m sure). As for Patrick Ness, I would say definitely go to his Chaos Walking trilogy next! It’s a dystopian-type trilogy, but different from the other ones I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot. Plus, it’s being made into a movie that’s coming out in the next year or so, so it’s a great time to get into it! 🙂
Such a mood Amanda. I couldn’t stick to this rule of 30 books either, cause like I LOVE ALL MY BOOKS EVEN THE ONES I’M BITTER ABOUT. In all honesty I enjoy reading them nearly as much as I enjoy staring at them on my shelves xD Hmmm I don’t know which books I’d keep. I’d probably keep the last 7 or so books from a series because well it’s 13 books long ok, no room for all of them. So the last 7 will do, I’d also shove all four of the Raven Cycle books in which means I’d be at 11 xD hmmmm I don’t know…this is hard
It’s so hard! Especially if you’re into really long book series. And if you like to collect multiple editions of books. 30 definitely doesn’t make enough room for them all!