Bookshelf Quandary

After two and a half months at our new home, I have bookshelves. I spent yesterday unpacking boxes and trying to decide which ones earned a space, since I have a limit. I feel as if I were being reunited with old friends. Best of all, I am reaping a small reward for the time I spent packing the books.

I went about the packing process methodically: Books I Want to Read Next, Good Books I Want to Keep, Shakespeare (2 boxes), music books, Southern authors, humor, art, photography, scrapbooking, books on the Holocaust and the Vietnam war, books of poetry (I won't say how many boxes).  I have several boxes of my signed first editions, some of which I'd love to sell, some with which I'd never part. Packed in their own boxes, I have so many paperbacks, especially classroom classics.

I was surprised at the number of duplications (in part because people who know me tend to buy me books for gifts). Most of them I have put aside for other book lovers to whom I will pass them along. I have several books from my high school days, with "Nancy Coats" written on the inside front cover.

Since I also have small bookshelves in the rooms I have outfitted for the grandkids, I move books in there for them too--The Borrowers, the Little House books, Where the Red Fern Grows, the Narnia series, many of them books I read with my own children when they were small.

The decision-making gets tough when I have the shelves filled but I don't have the boxes empty.  I had at least one full box of Shakespeare left over, for example. Do I put away the books I have already read (at least once) and keep the "To Read" stack? Already I find myself opening up old favorites. With Mother's Day a day or so away, I found John McPhee's lovely essay "Silk Parachutes." I first read it in the New Yorker, prompting me to write him (and to get a letter in return.) I also found a copy of Christian Hymns No. 2 (the one with "Trust and Obey" on page 1.)

I know so many people who read exclusively on eReaders now or depend completely on the public library. I do both, but I have an ongoing relationship with my books. It's nice to give them a little fresh air.

Bookshelf Quandary

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."
--Anna Quindlen

Sometimes my different blogging venues experience some crossover. Over at the Alabama Tar Heel, I'm "hosting" an online book club this year, reading through Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, month by month.  This month she focuses on marriage, a Valentine's tribute I imagine.  But one thing struck me: she said that since she had started her research on happiness, she had accumulated lots of books on marriage and relationships. Her husband Jamie remarked that people who saw their bookshelves would think they were having marital trouble.

That made me wonder what anyone would gather by looking at my book collections.  As I shared over at that site, I have a disproportionate number of books on reducing clutter. And they haven't worked.  But since I love to organize my books--my own special blend of Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress method, and indie bookstore, I found I had pockets of related books too. Especially as I started packing up and trying to prioritize which books I'd keep within reach and which I'd want to unpack first, found interesting groupings. 

I have a huge number of poetry collections and chapbooks, particularly by North Carolina poets and my friends from my poetry network. I also have lots of books of Southern humor and lots of books on the Holocaust. Among my books of music and about music, I have so many different hymn books (including Christian Hymns No. 2, in which "Trust and Obey" was song no. 2. (You're much younger than me if you didn't know that but you know 728b.)

Tomorrow the moving van will pull into the driveway in our home in Nashville. I dread the unpacking, especially since I know the movers packed up our dirty bath towels when we weren't looking. The biggest challenge, though, will be what to do with my books--all those books--because this house doesn't have the walls of bookshelves--yet.

Bookshelf Fantasy

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. "--Anna Quindlen

I know plenty of people who are content to check a book out of the library, read it, and return it. Some are patient enough to put their names on a waiting list there for a particular title, content to wait until it returns. Others that I know buy paperbacks by the dozens, read them, then pass them along to schools or to Goodwill.

I have a strange and wonderful relationship with my books. I'm not particularly fussy about whether they are hardback or paperback, new or used. I do collect a number of signed first editions, which for future value should be hardback, but I also buy plenty of paperbacks from used bookstores or from half.com. Most often, I want to keep them after I am finished. I love to lend them to friends, but I also hope for their safe return.

About the time we moved to this house, I left my position teaching high school in a spacious room with a whole wall of shelves I had accumulated over the years. When I moved to the community college, I had a cubicle in the bullpen I shared with five other instructors. I gave away some books--sharing YA novels with the new teacher I had mentored, passing on duplicates, and such. Most, however, came home in boxes and have moved from my garage to the attic. My husband has been frustrated by the clutter; I have been frustrated when trying unsuccessfully to find any one particular book.

Over the last two weeks, we have (or at least our carpenter/painter has) completed a wall of new bookshelves in an alcove of the master bedroom. If the daughter on Father of the Bride was disappointed with a blender from her beloved, I hate to think how she would have responded to bookshelves. I couldn't be more delighted.

Now I am trying to establish a system I can maintain. Do I separate fiction from nonfiction? Books read from those unread? Should I organize by author or by theme? My other shelves in our home office will retain the books I use specifically for teaching. I have my worn mass market paperbacks there. (Many have my name pencilled in from high school or college. Some I have loved and taught repeatedly are rubberbanded. These maybe less picture perfect, but they have character--and history.) My oversized books have a place there too.

I'm taking my time filling the new shelves, moving books from the attic not by the boxload but by armfuls, like a mama cat with her kittens. I look forward next to having time to sit down and read.

**Here, too, is my contribution to "Teaser Tuesdays":

from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimann:

"You failed, Jack. You were meant to take care of them all. That included the baby. Especially the baby."

Bookshelf Fantasy