Discriminating Reader

"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.