First of all, the major book thing I’ve been doing lately is
packing them. All of them. Into boxes. Many, many boxes.
And then carting them to a storage area so that somehow someone will buy
our house and then we can move into a beautiful, bigger house that we are
trying to buy (which is only about four blocks from where we live now).
I thought this would be more traumatic than it has been, to
be honest. But packing books is
easy. Yes, they are heavy, but
they also fit nicely into boxes.
This is why most of the books that live in my house are now living in a
cold storage area for a while. I
do have plenty of books still here, at least three or four bookshelves worth,
so really, it almost doesn’t matter how long selling this house takes in this
regard. I will not run out of
reading material. It’s possible I
will go mad and set the house on fire out of frustration with all the painting,
re-carpeting, and cleaning we are doing, but at least I still have the solace
of some books.
It is finally December and I’ve decided that I need to stop
starting new books and start finishing off the ones I’ve been slogging along
with this year. Thus, the only new
books I’m going to allow myself to begin before January 1, 2013 will be
audiobooks from the library and maybe one or two from my shelf of ten (but only
if I finish the previous Shelf of Ten book).
Yes, if it wasn’t clear to the two people who ever read this
blog before, I do read multiple books at a time. Usually the number is around five. I’ll sometimes try to commit to reading just one at a time
but it never works out somehow.
Currently I’m reading four… and it was five until I stayed up until two
a.m. on Friday night finishing reading a library book; The M.D.: A Horror Story by Thomas M.
Disch.
That title brings me to something I need to comment on: my
obsessive love for our public library, which has recently been renewed.
I love libraries.
My first job (other than retail work for my father) was in a public library. I even went to library school for a
while. My most vivid memory of
junior high is standing in the science fiction section of our local public
library and looking for new Ray Bradbury titles I hadn’t yet devoured.
Because of my attempt to read the books I already own – and try
to get rid of some of them – I hadn’t been visiting the public library as much
as I used to. But now I’m obsessed
again… because of the audiobook selection. I’ve finished listening to eleven audio books in the last
four months or so and I’m currently listening to two more. I have a plan to go to the library
today to pick up another one because I’m afraid I will run out of discs this
weekend; I’m working four days in a row at Mayo but not planning to stay over
in Rochester. That is about eight
hours of driving time that requires audiobook entertainment.
The only downside that I have run into using the library for
this purpose is the occasional scratched disc. I confess: that is super annoying to me. But nothing is perfect.
Big Exciting Plan for my next blog post: Best and Worst
Books I Read in 2012. Probably.
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