I was a nerdy kid who lived in a small farm town with a nice library. Every summer, I rode my blue banana seat bike there and borrowed all I could carry in my white basket. I would read in binges, first an author, then a topic, sometimes just a shelf. Reading was my friend, my passion and my salvation. Some of my books remain old friends; they're part of who I am. I learned later in life that my Grandma Emily and her father before her were compulsive readers. Pop Ransom read all the books in the library, shelf by shelf, 6 at a time. He taught Emily to read when she was four, and it was at her house that I discovered books in every nook and cranny, where I found To Kill a Mockingbird - I almost believed I was right there with Scout, and I wanted Atticus to be my Dad, even though my Dad was a fine man in his own right. Grandma's house is where I found The Poseidon Adventure and had my first girl crush on Reverend Scott and I wanted him to save me too! And so it began.
Decades later I rekindled my book lust by volunteering and then chairing a community book drive for my kid's elementary school. Each year the community donated used books: we'd collect 10-15 thousand, sort them, sell about half and donate the remainders to charities that included underfunded public schools, Head Start, Goodwill and Operation Paperback, which gets books to soldiers overseas. The used book sale changed my life in many ways, most of them good. I broke a lot of fingernails sorting books, but I made a lot of friends and I ballooned my unread book pile from 20 to almost 200. That's a pretty huge backlog. I intend to read them, and I'm trying to stop adding to the pile, but I live 10 miles in either direction from two Goodwill stores and cannot resist the urge to see what good books await. It's quite the problem, but I can imagine worst flaws.
My house was pretty crowded, shelves were a safety hazard, and books were piled in every corner of every room, so my husband built me these shelves in the basement office, where I put my unread piles. Most of them, anyway.
He could not believe how quickly I filled them and how many were left laying around:
Let's just say I have a fascination with US history and my ancestral lands.
These decorative boxes hold my really need to read first piles of fiction, memoir and writing memoir books. Not much progress since I made the pretty pile.
This pile, next to my favorite reading window, is mostly about bibliomania, or book madness. How appropriate.
And then there's this shelf, which my husband built for me when we moved to this house. He foolishly thought this would be all I need, he will not learn. The top shelf is my beloved favorites, never to be given away, the second shelf, books I've read but not ready to part with, and the rest, well, there they are, mocking me.
I discovered LibraryThing in 2007 and promptly created a database of all my books. With the click of a mouse I know exactly how many books I have yet to read (185), how many are in process or unfinished (21) how many I read each year (32 ytd - way behind schedule) and how many live here with me (1044). Library thing is wonderful for culling out duplicates, or helping me prioritize what to read next, but honestly, I could just close my eyes, reach out and grab something and it would probably be a good read.
I'm not going to bore you with the other piles, the reference books, cookbooks, art books, nature books, music books, coffee table books and every other kind of book that fills the nooks and crannies of my life. And then there's the kids books. Yikes.
Last but not least, this is my favorite bookcase, and it holds my most precious books, my family, my past, my geneology and my collection of vintage literature texts. It has a tiny drawer bursting with my bookmark collection. It's too small, too decorative and too crowded, but I love it anyway, it's what I'd grab in a fire.
Maggie, see the zebra cover? I Married Adventure too!
Hope book love and book lust fill your hearts too. Now I've got to go read!
