Dead books are those which have absolutely no use today. This might initially be hard to work out as surely a book is always useful?

The biggest collection of completely dead books are Computer reference manuals. If we take a book written for the Commodore Amiga for example a retro enthusiast might still want to use it to mess around with old programming software or other software. But what about for example a book that's a guide to Office 97 or Photoshop 4. It really has no purpose now because the software is so out of date, or the software still exists in a far newer version that is nothing like the version the book is based on.

I have been going through my book collection and have ended up with a massive pile of reference books like this for software like very old Adobe software, 3D packages like Maya and 3DSMax 2 and 3. Programming reference books for very old versions of PHP or for software I used to use every day in my job like Macromedia Director. All obsolete and dead. But I am finding it hard to just throw them away as they have a lot of memories attached to them, but also they were expensive at the time. Often nearly 50 pounds each. Can I bring myself to just bin them? I think I'm going to have to. Plus they have actually been sat in a box for other 10 years so I'm not even seen them for that long. I am needing to adopt a 3 year rule. If I've not looked at something for 3 years do I really need to keep it?

I just hate the idea of destroying a book though. Many people have no attachments to books. Some will read a novel and then pass it on to someone else or just throw it away. How? I read a novel and it goes on the bookcase into my collection. Novels for me are not like reference books. You can come back to them. They hold memories. And I have always seen books as precious as I struggled to learn to read when very young as I am dyslexic and UK schools in the late 70s didn't really recognise it. My mum thankfully did and worked hard to help me read, for which I'm ever grateful. It's an essential skill in life that unlocks so much.