I recently bought two large bookshelves. Since we moved, and the kids each asked to have a set of shelves in their rooms, and another set got repurposed from ‘book’ to ‘bathstuff’ due to limited space in the bathroom… I needed some shelves. I picked up a little set at the thrift shop, but it wasn’t enough, so the Ginja Ninja and I headed down to Ikea on a quest.
She’s my only kid that enjoys Ikea. The Junior Mad Scientist, like the First Reader, finds it like being trapped in a maze and it makes them want OUT, Noaw! Even though both of them will go with me, but only if we go on a weekday, during the day, when there are few people. Heck, I’m not fond of it on a weekend. Which is why we went on a Friday early, since I’d managed to get out of work earlyish. Long story short, and leaving out all the little things we found, we came home with the shelves I thought I needed. I’d guesstimated, based on the number of book boxes still stacked in the office and living room.
I guessed wrong. I set up the larger of the two sets of shelves over the weekend, and it absorbed all of those books, with plenty of gaps for collection expansion (and one shelf where m’biscuit busted, and I’ll have to put an angle bracket in to support the weight of books.) So… that leaves me with one shelf still flat-packed in it’s box. I posted on social media that I was thinking about returning it, and the replies came thick and fast: keep it. You’ll need it. Put tchotchkes on it, but eventually the books will come and take it over.
Sort of like setting up a birdhouse and waiting for a family of feathered friends to come set up a nest? It does give me the freedom to buy a book rather than have to think ‘where am I going to put this?’
Over the years, and most especially the past five years, when I’ve moved, I’ve shed books. Like tossing ballast overboard during a storm. Books are heavy, and moving them repeatedly takes a toll. When I moved from NH to OH, I sold something like a third of the library in order to pay to ship another third to OH via media mail. The remaining third was either discarded, or left in storage… but everything that was left in storage was lost. So my library was very slender when I arrived here. It’s doubled, at least, but since we’ve moved twice, I’ve thinned out more and more that I don’t think we need. The First Reader is easy to please – as long as he has his L’Amours, Butcher’s, Correia’s, Ringo’s, Drake’s… LOL! I tend to acquire mostly non-fiction in paper these days, aside from my old pulpy paperbacks I was using as research and ‘flavor’ for the Noir books.
So I haven’t set up the remaining bookshelf. Yet. But it will go up, and there will be books on it. Right now the plan is for it to go alongside the fireplace in our bedroom, and to contain the Baen hardbacks to match the existing bookshelf in there which is all L’Amour (in paper and hardbacks, thanks, Dad!). I bought a few books over the weekend, in fact. So it won’t remain empty for long… and the potential it represents is important. For perhaps the first time in my life I have the ability to acquire as many books as I like. I don’t have unlimited money, but if I want to jaunt out to Murphy’s, or the Dollar Book Swap, I can. I have a car, the ability to drive it, some cash in my pocket, and if I have the inclination…
No one is going to tell me that books are clutter, and I should hide the few I’m allowed to keep in my bedroom. Friends I have over are more likely to admire the serpentine library than they are to tut-tut my taste in tomes. My husband loves my collection and helps add to it. I’m rich in books, and even though some of them might never get read, despite my best intentions, they make me feel happy and like I am finally whole.
The empty bookshelf represents a certain kind of wealth to me. It’s not hoarding if it’s books, right?
Comments
17 responses to “The Empty Bookshelf”
It sounds wonderful.
It’s totally hoarding and it’s totally awesome. Have fun finding books and filling that shelf!
RIGHT!!!
I have, over the years, had several people tell me that books are clutter and shouldn’t be in the living room where visitors can see them. Not in exactly those words, but the idea got through. As you can probably imagine, none of those people were readers. I guess one man’s (or woman’s — those people were all female) trash is another’s treasure, and vice versa. As you can also probably imagine, each time I heard that comment, my jaw dropped — mentally, if not physically — and my opinion of that person’s good sense and intelligence dropped a few points!
Can you head down to Ikea and grab me a Rast bedside table? they won’t ship them anymore and we need another one.
Lol. I can try. Will you be at LC?
naah, that trip isn’t happening this year.
I store my paperbacks two deep, and hardbacks one deep. I currently have 4 book cases about 36 or 42 inches wide and one hardback deep. (The Red Book of Westmarch (LOTR Red Leather collectors edition)) will fit on the shelf. But I have too many paperbacks to do only 1 deep.
I’ve thinned our most of the mmpb fiction. We read that in ebook. For books we want in paper, I’ve moved to hardbacks.
If I had either a near-unlimited budget, or scandalous handyman skills, I’d have shelves along every wall in every room in the house, including closets. MOST of them would be filled with books. However, the kitchen would have space for crock pots, mixers, blenders, bread mill, rice cookers, coffee grinders, and all the specialty tools. And the living room would have SOME room for pictures, trophies, and whatever. But mostly, BOOKS! Wall to wall, floor to ceiling; a few openings to accommodate windows and doors and give access to electrical outlets, and that’s it. Redecorating would mean re-arranging the books to present a different pattern, maybe. It would certainly be the end of discussing paint & wall-paper.
BOOKS!
I have these lovely stainless steel shelves in the kitchen for small appliances and what-not. They roll!
I have shelves, mostly, but they’re spread between two buildings.
The fiction is nicely stored in three tall bookshelves in my office/mancave, but the nonfiction is currently stuck in the mezzanine level in the barn/shop. Right now, there’s 16 linear feet of shelf, but I think I can get them down to the workroom (the ceiling of which supports the mezzanine) if I build to the ceiling. I like metalworking, but I’m no stranger to cabinet making…
I tossed the 1977 vintage Encylopedia Brittanica, keeping only the dictionary and atlas that came as part of the package. Between the 5 linear feet of shelf and the top of the book cases (another 7.5 feet), I can get the general history and some of the technical history books in the house.
The challenge right now is what to do with 20-ish years of Home Shop Machinist magazines. The publisher never did an eBook version of old issues, and my scanner blanches at the thought of doing it all, but I’m thinking of careful article scanning. There are projects I know I’ll never do, and old adverts that aren’t helpful (usually), so I might have a starting point.
It’s only hoarding when you run out of space on your shelves but keep buying books until you have waist-high piles of books on every horizontal surface in your home. Not that I’ve ever personally lived like that, mind you… [whistles innocently]
You might not, I have! Lol. It’s good to have space.
Oh no, I have. And the only reason I don’t still live like that is brcbeca I was forced to get rid of a good chunk of my library when we moved. And then only because I couldn’t afford to pay for the second moving truck.
Someday I’ll have a forever house, and then I won’t have to think ‘do I want to move this?’
Some of these comments are reminding me of the house where I grew up. Outside of the bedrooms, I don’t think we had too many actual bookcases, but we had books everywhere, and everywhere they could be shoehorned in, my Pa built shelves for them. I’m in a similar fix now, but without Pa’s handiness (I somehow assumed that upon reaching adulthood, a proper set of tools would somehow appear in my house, along with the skills to use them). I guess I have a learning curve ahead of me.