I tried to clean my room today. In other words, I got out a couple of boxes of stuff that had been sitting around my room since I moved into my parents' house two and a half years ago and sorted through said stuff, mostly rolling my eyes at terrible (and sooo cheeeesy) poetry I had written and wondering why on earth I had kept a box of Easter-egg colors that I had never used.
Unfortunately, one thing I've discovered during all this sorting and throwing away is that I have too, too many books. I've now got at least a full shelf-worth that there just isn't room for, and which I have now stacked unbecomingly on the floor in front of my already bursting bookshelves.
Bother.
My problem is that I keep buying books. It's suddenly not enough for me just to be able to read them; I need to own them so that I can read them once and then years later pick them up again, brush off the inevitable accumulation of dust, and cozy on into the old familiar pages.
I want to read all the books I've bought that I haven't gotten to yet. And I want to read the books that I've read twenty times already but still just crave sometimes.
I need to go through my collection and weed, but I know that as soon as I get rid of my old French textbooks, I'll meet a French person who refuses to speak English to me, and then where will I be? Stuck without a reference. (Except for maybe Babel Fish.) And if I donate that novel I read once and (shockingly) hated, I'll realize ten years from now that it was full of pertinent little gems for my present life and if only I had kept it I would realize how humans look to arthropod-like aliens, (although I didn't actually dislike that one; I just never thought I'd read it again), or what to do when the Mafia controls pizza delivery.
So. I need to declutter. But before I declutter, I need to read. A great deal. But before I can read a great deal I need time. And time is something I just don't have.
So books will remain in stacks on my floor indefinitely.
Unless I invest in a new set of bookshelves...
11 comments:
LOL - just buy the bookshelves!
...And here's something else you need to add to your collection, (since you seem to like "old timey" romance type stuff) "The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938–1978."
I just discovered it on one of my other favorite blogs - http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/posie_gets_cozy/
she's posted exerpts under the heading "Book for the Bookbag."
...(just a little enabling ;) )
The books will keep! On shelves or in boxes or stashed away in whatever corners you find. Just please don't get rid of them simply for space. A long time ago I once sold most of my collection for far too little cash just because I thought I needed the money. For rent, or some such silly thing. I still mourn the loss.
I should just MAKE you some bookshelves... out of modeling clay and... cardboard! It'll work great, right? RIGHT?
Ooooh, Pat. Enabling. Ah, I am helpless before the suggestion of books I should read. :)
And snowsim, I think your advice is perfect, as I'm already inclined to follow it. :) I'm just worried about the number of boxes I'll have to use to pack them all up...
Debs, I'll TAKE 'em! (I'll take any bookshelves, although I'm not sure how sturdy the clay & cardboard will be.) ;)
Man, I just know how that is. I had to do that when I moved into the basement and had significantly less shelf space. Man, and I totally understand about owning them. I don't care if I've read them or not, I just need books!
It doesn't help either that there's this cute little hole-in-the-nook bookshop in Cedar City that sells used and new books at discounted prices. Yeah...I have to seriously refrain from buying....
And i agree with snowism, don't sell your books! Keep them!
Oooh, Jekka. Close proximity to a bookstore is the most potent sort of enabling influence. So sorry. :)
Nearly every one of our books has some shelf space to call its own, but that may change once baby starts crawling. She's already showing keen interest in all those brightly colored objects on our shelves, and I dread the day when I walk into the room and find the entire population of our lower shelves heaped on the floor, their pages all crumpled and drooled-upon.
Maybe we'll put big pictures of Brussel sprouts in front of them to scare her off.
Lizardbreath,
I want to know if you still have that enormous box full of books from your youth. I remember going through it in one of the "Clean out the basement" adventures. It seemed that all the books had the same plot: Eleven-year-old Girls and the Horses They Love. You should write one of those for your next novel.
Oooh. Kim. Brussels Sprouts would scare ME away. Yikes.
And Jo, I think I donated most of those books to Bekah. Darn. I should've kept one for future novel ideas!
(BTW for all you non-McGee family peoples, Bekah is my eight-year-old horse-adoring niece.)
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