Tag: bookshelves

So- I went to the library sale. I donated forty books weeded out of my collection a few days ago . . . and came home with twenty to replace them! Guess I haven’t lost my passion for books after all. It helped that the venue was small and I went on the first day before the weekend which wasn’t crowded at all- so very little distraction besides scanning the spines laid out on tables, which I was able to do without concussion symptoms coming up again. It was nice for that to feel normal! I did stick to the animal books and juvenile / YA fiction mostly, though- picked up a few adult fiction and my head would just start to swim a bit from reading the description on the back or thumbing through a few pages. Not quite yet.

Here’s my stack! A few notes: I was pleased to find two books by favorite authors that I haven’t read yet (Glenn Balch and Sy Montgomery), and one that’s on my TBR list- A Wolf Called Wander. The rest were all picked up on a whim. I think the set of Young Readers Library volumes was maybe a foolish spontaneous purchase- but I do have the one on reptiles already, and thought it might be nice to round out the collection somewhat. They’re older factual books on different science and nature subjects- probably interesting enough, and might be amusing to see how dated the information is. The book with no words on the spine is about a zoo- I have one like it on the Smithsonian zoo, this one is of the San Diego zoo. And the one with half the spine missing is Wild Discovery Guide to Your Cat.

I also got three jigsaw puzzles! This one in particular caught my eye because its container is a metal shaped tin, that looks like an old fahioned camera. Very like one I used to own myself, in fact.

My first thought was this might be a three-dimensional puzzle. But I opened it and peeked inside: normal kind of cardboard puzzle pieces.

Then I thought it was a shaped puzzle to look just like the camera, but no! Unfolding a paper inside, it turns out to be the picture guide, and it’s a collage of older cameras. So it kinda fooled me.

But I still expect it to be fun!

I think this is the first time I have done this, that wasn’t prompted by having to pack up and move house.

I pulled three books from my collection that were duplicates. Four more weren’t even listed in my catalog, when I went through to remove them all from the record. Odd, that. I wonder how much further off the count is. Now it sits at 2,042.

But somehow, I’m not nearly so keen and eager to attend the public library’s annual used book sale, as I once was. I find myself eager to acquire, fondly perusing or re-organizing, and reluctant to let go of any puzzles right now- but my ardor for book collecting has cooled. And scanning shelves and shelves (or tables and tables) of titles for the ones lodged in my dim TBR memory to leap out at me- just gives me the feeling of oncoming headaches, unfocused vision and mental fatigue nowadays. Sigh. I still hope that will lift in the future. It feels kind of weird that I had no qualms- not even a twinge- about purging forty books from my shelves. (The TBR shelves, not the permanent I-want-to-keep-forever shelves. They’re all books I’d picked up on a mild whim, never had a strong interest in, and now wonder if I ever will).

I could have probably gone through my ‘permanent’ shelves and culled many more. I don’t think I will ever grow bonsai, my collection of houseplants has also been purged- due to cats that eat them- and my interest in keeping aquarium fish is seriously waning- so books that deep dive into those subjects seem kind of pointless to me at the moment. But this exercise was tiresome already. And who knows- perhaps a friend of mine who also suffered a traumatic brain injury a few months before I did, was right. She told me she didn’t feel like herself again for a full year, and had just started to wonder if “this is the new me, I better just get used to it” when things suddenly felt back to normal. Maybe one day I’ll wake up eager to spend hours getting my hands dirty in the garden again, or longing to stock a new aquarium and tend the underwater plants? Right now I can’t see it though.

I’m still going to the library sale this upcoming weekend though! I just don’t expect to bring home a full bag or two of books like I once did. A handful, is more like.

I thought this culling exercise would make my room feel less cluttered. It didn’t. There’s still four hip-high stacks on the floor. I had a faint hope I’d get enough cleared away that my books would all fit on the shelves again, but that was kind of laughable. I did do a bit of sorting through the TBR, though- pulling titles that seem to fit my current reading mood and capability- juvenile and middle-grade fiction, animal stories- to the top, so that I have easy ones close at hand.

Re: the plant cull. How can I protest or bemoan having a house devoid of plants, when instead I now have these two felines with such lively personalities?

Seems worth it to me!

Book sales is something where I let myself splurge. It’s supporting the library! Their prices have gone up in past years but gladly my husband’s income has kept pace so I’m allowed to indulge a bit. I pretty much just picked up everything that looked in any way interesting to me, and bought it. Came home with only three regrets- two books I forgot I already owned (not pictured here), and one that my kid owns and would have let me borrow. The blue one on bottom of righthand pile is George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. I read all his books a very long time ago when young. Not sure if I’ll like them now, but I’m curious to try and see. The rest of these are all new to me, though quite a few are on my TBR, so I snapped ’em up.

I also got a few gardening books, and this abridged copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species. I have another full copy of that, but the illustrations in this one looked great so I couldn’t pass it up.

And this stack is from a week earlier, when I took myself to the used bookstore next town over. I spent almost the same amount of money as at the library sale, and got a fraction number of books. So the library sale is still a really good deal! And now my personal library tops 2,000 books wooo hooooo.

I went with my kid to the local library sale. Not at my usual branch, but a smaller one nearby. The sale is smaller, too. This year it was – rather disappointing. For me! We filled a cloth shopping bag for $10, but most of those were books my kid picked out. Personally I brought home seven books, and only two of those actually added to my library. Wow. Pickings were slim enough, we were there on the second day of the sale and either not much got donated, or a lot of people came on friday. I passed over many many great titles that I already own, but chose a hardback copy of Roadless Area to replace my paperback, and a hardbound, very worn first edition of Bambi with the exact same illustrations I fondly recall from my first reading of it out of a public library when I was around ten. Even though I already have a copy of that. It feels like insurance, for such a favorite. The other duplicates were mistakes! I got two books I already own but had forgotten they were on my shelves. Oops.

The ones that are actually new to me: Peter and the Starcatchers (which I thought was on my TBR? but it’s not) and The Church Cat by Mark Bryant- shorts stories that looked like they might be good. Just because it’s cats you know.

I’ve never had such a small library sale haul. Here’s hoping the one in fall, at my regular library branch, will be better. Although really, maybe it’s a good thing that my acquisition rate is slowing down. And my daughter sure was happy to find a lot of crafting and knitting books, fairy stories, some mild horror and romance, and a Harry Potter cookbook!

(Now I’m wondering: are there fewer books donated to the library sale, because people stick them in those little free libraries instead? we have several in town)

Yesterday, took a drive to visit a nice used bookstore. This is what I brought home! Swallows and Amazons has been on my out-of-print want-to-find radar for a while, Further Adventures of Lad is an old favorite from childhood I was happy to re-encounter, the rest just look good and I’m hoping I’ll like them!

Here’s more book piles: my middle-schooler decided to clean out her bookcase. She feels she’s outgrown the picture books, and was ready to donate them but I said no-o-o, we can’t give away Curious George or Toot and Puddle! The Little House is a treasure! I’m not letting you get rid of Oley the Sea Monster. And we have to keep all the Frances books (and so on- I exclaimed my way all through the entire pile while sorting).

So there’s a huge stack in the hallway (another pile is getting donated but it’s much smaller) while I figure out where to shelve them elsewhere in the house (those in my own room are full to overflowing again). Time to get some reading done, and get those book piles tidied up!

I just have to decide now, if I want to add all these picture book titles to my LibraryThing catalog. Would make sense to do so.

Well, the summer reading program has definitely got me using our library again!

I tried to find books for the challenge which are already on my TBR backlog- and then got overeager- oh yes, I do want to read that one, and that one, and this one too . . . !

The challenge only asks me to read one graphic novel, one book a librarian recommended, check out and use one cookbook, etc. I borrowed eight graphic novels, four cookbooks, three recommended titles, and a few others just on a whim. Hope I can read them all before the due dates!

A while ago I said to my husband, why don\’t we put shelves behind the bed? where there\’s empty space between the headboard that leans back, and the air duct that juts out. I looked for a long time and couldn\’t find any ready-made bookcase that would fit at just 9\” deep. So he finally built some for me:

I held things up, moved cords for the drill around, painted. Took us about two days. Then spent a few hours rearranging my library to make use of it! Which was the fun part. These are all TBR books. First row in:

and the rest:

(And it\’s only half-I have eight other shelves of TBR). Happily this got them all off the floor, and allowed me to rearrange the permanent books so none are double-stacked or horizontally wedged in. As you can see in before and after pics below, of another wall in my bedroom. The stack on the floor in the corner is mostly books I read since the pandemic started. I had no place left to shelve them into the permanent collection.

Now there\’s space and then some! It\’s so nice they all have a bit of breathing room too.

What’s a birthday, without a few new books? I placed an order mid-October with Powell’s, and the last of them finally arrived today. I’m just delighted. Thank you to my husband, my parents and my in-laws who all enabled this little splurge!

I miss the library. My kids do, too. Third-grader is bemoaning the fact that she\’s read all the books on her shelves and has nothing new (this is true). Well, except the Magic Treehouse series. She tried a few, didn\’t really care for them. So I put them up on the book swapping site I belong to, and let her pick some titles for herself. Half a dozen on the way now!

Then I decided to support an independent used bookstore, and made an online purchase. I looked for titles by some of my favorite authors that I\’ve been wanting to try (most of which are not available at the library anyway). Did the same on the swapping site. Here\’s all those:

Discovered a fellow member with very similar taste in reading material. Who was offering two-for-one on the paperbacks. So I also chose a ton of unknowns, just for the heck of it. (I have lots of points on that site to use up). In the mood for juvenile fiction, so ended up with this lot, which came today:

Finally, picked these out for my kid. I might read some of them, too! She just got a new book for her birthday, so has something to read now. A family member gave her a gift card and guess what, she used it to order a book by her favorite author- however it\’s not out in print until July. Now she has more books while waiting for the one she really wants (seventh in the Upside-Down Magic series).

Of course, I\’ll always let her borrow age-appropriate books from my shelves, but she\’s not quite as keen on animal stories as I am . . .