caerula's Diaryland Diary
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
books, upon the packing of
Here's my house. Hehe. I feel giggly just thinking about it. I get to go visit it today. It will be kind of odd because it will be split right down the middle and still probably covered in the flapping plastic stuff they put on it to protect it from the road. But I don't care. It's my house. An actual house that belongs just to me and BB. We can paint the walls and put up wallpaper and makes as many holes in the drywall as we want. Hehe.
Mom's coming over tonight to help me pack. I am fairly incapable of packing anything in any reasonable sort of way except for books, which I am very anal about packing into boxes in the order they come off the shelves, and making sure there are no bent covers or pages in the process. But, hey, dishes? Whatever, just toss 'em in. That's why my mom is willing to pack my kitchen stuff for me. Not that we're packing dishes, yet; it'll still be at least a week before we can stay at the house and we might need dishes and things before them. But all the doodads and winter clothes and books and stuff can be packed up.
I've started on books already, since it's a looong process, to get everything in and still in order. I have all of YB's books done, the hall bookshelf (children's -- not YB's, which are a mess, but mine from my childhood -- Laura Ingalls Wilder, L.M. Montgomery, Noel Streatfeild, L.M. Boston, etc.), one of the bedroom bookshelfs (religion, psychology, science, pets, quilting), and a bunch of my paperbacks from the living room stacks. I'm trying to weed out those I know I won't read again to donate to MPL, but it's really hard for me to let go of a book. Even if I'm sure it has served its purpose in my life and needs to move on, it's hard to do. BB does not understand this, but then he doesn't reread, either, and never read much at all until he met me. He doesn't have any books he's owned since grade school, cherished and reread and snuck under covers and behind textbooks. Poor deprived man.
My books are in Dewey Decimal Order. N was making fun of me for this the other day. But it makes so much sense. I worked in a public library for two years after grad school, and I soon found myself putting my non-fiction back on the shelves in the same order I'd find them at the library. I became indoctrinated to the concept of miscellanea before religion, followed by psychology, law, wild animals, science, medicine, pets, crafts and sewing, literature and poetry, biography and history. That's just the way books go.
Of course they are scattered on bookshelves throughout the apartment, but on one bookshelf I have all the dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, word-orgin books, computer books, etc (all of which fall in the 000s of misc. in Mr. Dewey's world), and another holds religion through crafts, there are two for literature and poetry (by time period, and then by author), and one with biographies and history (again by time period, and then by author). Fiction has two more bookcases, and is sorted by genre -- "general" fiction in the living room, mystery and scific also in there, childrens in the hall, and romance in the bedroom (where it should be, hehe). I'm not counting YB's books, as he has yet to learn the Way, and they tend to be scattered all over his room (although I couldn't resist grouping them by subject and reading level as I was packing them). And this doesn't include my TBR piles, of course, which are sorted in the order in which they came into my possession. I know where every single book I own is located at any given time, as long as BB hasn't misplaced it.
My husband has no concept of this order. He never used a library for anything but school reasearch, and of course was not indoctrinated into the Dewey way by dint of constant exposure. He understand that there IS an order, and that therefore I can find things, but he's always putting books back in the wrong place, or can't find the thing he's looking for. He's also the type that cracks spines, dog-ears pages, and bends covers. I know that I'm obsessively uptight about this, but it literally gives chills when I hear the "cre-eak" of a spine cracking. I love my books, but I can't devour them like some people can. When I'm done reading a new book, you generally can't tell it's been read. Sad, I know. And I hate to lend certain books because of this. I just know they'll come back bruised. I'm over this a bit, because in the last few years I've become addicted to library sales and used book shops. If its a _used_ book, I'll let it go freely and happily. Of course that has led to another difficulty -- I now one more than one copy of many books, a reading copy and a "good" copy. My darling husband also has no grasp of this concept. But my hardcovers contain several modern firsts, the product of scrounging books sales and used bookshops being very picky about condition, worth nothing now but maybe someday. Not that I would sell them.
In rereading this paragraph, I belive I might have a greater understand of why BB thinks I'm nuts.
10:51 a.m. - 2001-08-01
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
other diaries: |