Which books?
Life is a whirlwind these days, which is better than the alternative: a new job, a new house, and now tons of boxes lying around my condo like shells waiting to be filled with all sorts of things I forgot I owned. The new house will have built-in bookshelves in one of the front rooms, so I'll finally have a proper library, rather than a makeshift shelf situation under my stairs and along the red walls of the office, the red room library. We won't have the shelves done for a while, so I have to pack up my books and wish them so long for a few months. But, we all know that a few have to stick around, just so I don't feel lonely, so which ones should they be? What will I feel like reading in a week, a month?
People come into my house and ask me if I've read all my books, and I say that at any time I've read 70%. The remaining 30% is the constant, ever changing, influx of volumes that I find in random places, people give to me, or I've bought at a book store. Add the library books to this bit, and I have quite a chunk of unread books around the place. I can't stand giving books away - I never know when I might want to read one again - so the process of packing is arduous. But the process of picking the remainders is worse. Which books out of the remaining 30% should go in a few deep canvas bags and be hand delivered to my new bedroom? Off to the shelves and the cardboard shells to figure it out.
People come into my house and ask me if I've read all my books, and I say that at any time I've read 70%. The remaining 30% is the constant, ever changing, influx of volumes that I find in random places, people give to me, or I've bought at a book store. Add the library books to this bit, and I have quite a chunk of unread books around the place. I can't stand giving books away - I never know when I might want to read one again - so the process of packing is arduous. But the process of picking the remainders is worse. Which books out of the remaining 30% should go in a few deep canvas bags and be hand delivered to my new bedroom? Off to the shelves and the cardboard shells to figure it out.
I envy you of the build-in bookshelves. Since I can't even recall when, my bookcases have run out of space. I try to squeeze in as many volumes as I can, without incurring damage on the books. But now I separate the "homeless books" in piles like the post office sort out their mails. I have a TBR pile, a vacation pile (books that I accumulate but won't read until I go on a trip), night-stand pile, and an influx of things I buy at the store.
ReplyDelete