...you start to organize them in earnest, and discover just how many duplicates you have unknowingly acquired. I'm not talking here about softcover versions of beloved hardcovers, specifically purchased to take on long plane trips. I'm talking about identical books, bought at times far enough apart that you'd forgotten buying the first copy. I think Nick Hornby had something to say about that in his Believer column, along the lines of never having enough time to read all the books he had bought. I can certainly relate to that!
Meanwhile, I still have to get on with the sorting into reasonably intelligible categories & groups. Cookbooks were already in their own bookcase, as were music books (although both are overflowing & probably need to be culled). I've now sorted poetry and books about writing, mostly, made a good start on the travel, gardening, math & science, and biography. Still have a huge number of science/nature, history and art books to organize, and that doesn't even touch on all the novels, ranging from kiddy lit through fantasy & speculative fiction, historical novels, mysteries, mainstream, literary & modern works. Oh yes, and there's a rather large humour section, too.
Did I mention that there are books in every room of the house? I can never move because nobody will be willing to tote all the boxes of books. And I've only scratched the surface. The three rooms with the most books in them haven't even been touched.
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Don't feel bad. I actually prefer books over wallpaper too ;-)
ReplyDeleteWallpaper? Hmm, I think I remember that. Luckily, there's only one room where the bookcases block the wallpaper. All the other rooms are painted white, the better to display art on (it's a constant battle for wall-space around here!)
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