I've just been drawn into the Bookcrossing phenomenon. Perfect for a former librarian, you'd have thought.

But while it seems to be a great scheme, I'm participating in spite of myself. There's something not quite right about giving away books. Depleting one's collection rather than increasing. It all feels distinctly unnatural.

I've always been a hoarder by nature, unwilling to let things go, allowing them to grow around me, and carrying everything from home to home as I move through life. Consequently I have thrown away precisely one book - a freebie handed to me on the street by a Hare Krishna evangelist. And I agonised over that for days before finally lobbing it binwards.

It wasn't just chance that led me to library school. I have an innate respect for and love of the medium of the book. Old ones turn me on. One of the biggest buzzes I had during my time at University was being on the second floor balcony of the old British Library, being able to touch 14th century tomes.

So getting rid of books... creepy.

But every library needs refreshing or culling from time to time, and with a move in the offing, Bookcrossing allows me to move surplus stock or find room for new volumes with a clear conscience.

However, despite my collection being anything but high literature or learned, there are certain things staying put. No one's having my Hiaasens, neither my Bankses nor Brysons, and Douglas Adams is strictly off limits, as is Nick Hornby. And although I moved on from Pratchett some years ago, to lose touch with those parts of Discworld I know would feel like an abandonment of one of few things from my teens that I actually enjoyed. Then there's the reference books, the early Rankins, and the odd Coupland.

So all that's off limits. Not forgetting, of course, the stuff I can't remember or can't find. As for my treasured Noel Sainsbury, Jr - forget it.

But the rest - it'll have to make way for other, better, newer, older books.

So where do I start?