Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Let there be snark.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Books / Irresistible Read: “All the books in my 300 boxes sparked joy…”

Irresistible Read: “All the books in my 300 boxes sparked joy…”

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Who among us?… Michael Dirda is a professional book reviewer (I can remember reading his stuff at least thirty years ago, when the Washington Post Weekly was a tabloid on paper), so he’s had extraordinary access / reasons for book hoarding:

When my wife calculated that there were 300 boxes of books stacked precariously in our basement, I was sure she exaggerated. To my eyes, the stacks weren’t really that precarious. The overall book situation, however, was much worse than her estimate: The basement only accounts for half of my, ahem, collection. Bookcases line three walls of my living room. The attic holds a small library of late Victorian and early modern popular fiction. For years I even rented a storage unit until a kindly neighbor agreed to let me transfer its contents — all books — to a disused greenhouse in her backyard. I doubt the author of “Caring for Your Books”— a small paperback I wrote years ago — would approve of keeping first editions in a greenhouse.

Under the shadow of the coronavirus, two unwelcome thoughts increasingly nagged at me. First, how would my family cope with all this paper clutter if I weren’t around? Second, shouldn’t I use this period of isolation to do something about the sheer number of books? Three weeks ago a truck deposited a Zippy Shell storage container at the top of my driveway.

My plan was simplicity itself. I would transfer my subterranean hoard into the Zippy Shell, then thoroughly wash and clean the basement’s linoleum floor and concrete block walls. Years ago, I’d built a number of wooden bookcases and these would stay, but I’d also order some easy-to-put-together metal shelving from Home Depot. After rearranging the basement it would, ideally, resemble a miniature version of the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library. Anyway, that was the dream. Most importantly, all the books would fit on shelves or they’d be gone. I would address the attic and the greenhouse at some vaguely distant future date.

To empty the basement I hired a 16-year-old neighbor kid who — dutifully masked — spent three hours shifting 100 boxes up the steps and into the storage container. Two days later his arms and shoulders were still too sore for additional heavy lifting. Kids these days! My youngest son and I then carried more books up and out until Zippy was packed solid. The basement, however, was nowhere near empty.

It was clear to my lightning brain — I’m not a Sherlockian for nothing — that I needed to free up space in the storage pod before I could put more boxes into it. There was, I deduced, just one way to accomplish this: I would have to start selling or giving away some of my books right now rather than later. But which ones should go?…

I, too, was hoping to speed up my deaccessioning project during lockdown. (After two years — three? — I’ve gotten as far as the F-through-H authors on the fiction shelves. Many books have gone, but almost as many have been added. And I haven’t been able to do anything about the nonfiction, which would probably go slightly faster, because those books got boxed up when the central bookcases had to be removed so the experts could pump more cement to fill the gaps in the space between the floor and the basement, and now the Spousal Unit’s boxes of books are blocking mine.)

But even though I haven’t gone beyond our yard in three months come Sunday, among other IRL problems, I am spending even more time on the hellsites of the internet…

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  2. 2.

    zhena gogolia

    I am feeling the need to divest, but nobody wants them and I’m not retired yet.

  3. 3.

    frosty

    I cleaned up the bookshelves in the house. There were lots that I don’t need (or will read again). All the Flashman books are leaving, giving me room to buy more Alan Furst, for example. Many have been replaced by the internet: “Best RV and Tent Campgrounds in the USA”.

    This weekend, given the perfect weather, I’m going go through the boxes that have been in the garage for 17 years and start putting some of them on my newly opened shelves.

    Like he said, even though I may never read some of them again, they still spark joy.

  4. 4.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    It’s funny but I’ve had no trouble at all getting rid of physical books, usually when we move. Right now, the only physical books I keep are those I want to reread. Otherwise, I use an e-reader. To me, the form the text takes is irrelevant to my enjoyment.

  5. 5.

    arrieve

    I got rid of several boxes of books a year or so ago. Most of what went were paperback mysteries I’d never reread and books I’d read and didn’t like. The remaining books are on shelves and not on the floor, which I consider an achievement. (Of course, some of what’s on the shelves are in stacks four feet high, so you can’t exactly say they’re organized.)

    I’m much more bothered that I still have so many clothes. I gave away bags of work clothes and shoes when I retired, and every time I go through the closets I manage to find bags more. And I can’t give them to anyone at the moment, so they’re sitting in my living room, annoying me every time I walk past. Books never annoy me.

  7. 7.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: We moved internationally (to Toronto) about ten years ago and disposed of a ton of books then, and moved to a smaller place about two years ago. In both moves we disposed of a bunch of books.

    There are a handful of books I regret getting rid of out of boxes and boxes and boxes…

  8. 8.

    Kari Q

    I’ve started replacing physical books with ebooks. It clears the shelves without removing the book from my life, which makes it easier for me psychologically. At least when I die, no one will have to decide what to do with all the ones and zeros.

  10. 10.

    scav

    I’m still missing certain books I’ve had to leave behind. Some can come and go, but unexpected ones bubble up to the surface of the mind and ache. Last night it was a specific book on the history of writing. Very unlikely to be kindled or in the local library.

  13. 13.

    WereBear

    I spent a three day weekend at a remote cabin for the express purpose of relaxing. So I took some paper books I wanted to read.

    You can’t change the font size. Some of them have words disappearing into the spine. You need a separate light and you need to angle to page to catch that light. And if I put it down, it forgets where I was!

  14. 14.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Speaking of books, did any you see that JK Terfling has finally revealed her true colors?

    And good god her books have some really problematic crap in them. The worst one off the top of my head are the antisemitic banker goblins

  15. 15.

    laura

    @WaterGirl: hey birthday girl – what kind of cake will you be having? I’m jonesing for a slice of tart buttermilk lemon cake in honor of your special day.

    Spouse is way more book buying and shelf hogging than I am. I keep paring down to first editions and autographed books, oddities and intersections of art/music/criticism and cookbooks. I’ve got some boxes littering the floors in several rooms waiting for the last big ride out to the book den/friends of the library warehouse. But it’s the work clothes that are creating a hazard as everything I’ll never have to wear again is sorted and bagged/boxed for donation as soon as local charities start accepting donations again.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I should bookmark this for the next time my wife complains about all my books.

  19. 19.

    japa21

    My younger son, now almost 42, while in under grad and grad school, would take advantage of the universities’ library sales. He was also a regular at the Printers Row Book Fair in Chicago each year. Unfortunately he has never had sufficient space to store all his acquisitions which means we are proud custodians of several storage containers of his books. He has promised to remedy the situation this year.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus:  Thank you!

    The service here is terrible!  I had to bake my own cake, and I don’t get to eat any unless I do my 27-30 minutes on the treadmill.  Which is what I’m getting ready to do.  Because I want cake.

    Plus, they made me clean the bathroom!  On my birthday!  It’s just not right.

  27. 27.

    Timill

    Changing continents helped be get rid of quite a lot of books.

    Now I have an actual online bookstore, with prices and everything, courtesy of Square. No buyers yet…

  30. 30.

    raven

    @debbie: She’s a great person, she actually was the first one to see little Bohdi the morning we found him at the bakery.

  32. 32.

    glc

    After acting as executor on my cousin’s estate, for several years running (she had had interesting ideas about what should be done with her estate)  I decided I really should donate the bulk of my professional collection to a specialized library while I’m still around to do it, which led to some adventures in international shipping. One of the things factoring into that was the availability of much of this material in electronic form. My goal was to reduce that part of the library to a dozen books. I got it down under a hundred. And discovered along the way I wasn’t ready to part with my 19th century texts, which I certainly do not need. Anyway, that is less than one shelf.

    I still have a lot of books, non-professionally, in other rooms, and vague thoughts of doing something about that as well. Not that they have any particular value other than deserving some sort of retirement home or a dignified burial (the local library will take them and resell them for a dollar or so apiece). Anyway, I like having space on my office bookshelves  (not empty space, but enough space –  I gave away about 500 items but  there are other things still cluttering them up, and now they all fit).

  35. 35.

    Jake Gibson

    Semi OT. Not every one of the 1600 DVDs in my collection bring me joy. But my collection does.

  37. 37.

    Jinchi

    I think the subtext of the comments here is that, for anyone having a hard time downsizing their book collection, it’s not to late to ship a gift box for WaterGirl’s birthday.

    Hope you have a joyful one.

  38. 38.

    frosty

    My longest-term best friend worked for RR Donnelly, a printing company. He was allowed to bring books home. After a couple of years his wife put her foot down and said that for every book that came in, one had to go out.

  41. 41.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    Speaking of books, does anyone know a good book or resource about building one’s own computer?

  42. 42.

    grandmaBear

    I have gotten rid of quite a few boxes of books in my last two moves, especially after retiring and moving across country, but still have a few in storage as well as a few bookshelves full at home. Two things helped – my sister’s advice to get rid of anything you can readily get at your local library unless it’s really one of your favorite books, and second, trying to be brutally honest with myself about why I had them – some were part of my self-image. I am never going to finish that dissertation and there’s no point in keeping all those tertiary books about the field. Yes, keep the original books and/or translations if I liked them, but I no longer care much about what academics had to say about them. I still like hard-copy cookbooks, reference books and craft books, but unless it’s something I really expect to read more than once, or pass along to others, I’ll buy it as an ebook to save space.  Now about that yarn stash…

  46. 46.

    Major Major Major Major

    I got rid of all but one shelf of books for my last move. Very freeing; a lot of my books were just things I kept around because getting rid of them made me feel guilty. (They mostly went to good homes.)

  49. 49.

    laura

    @WaterGirl: I’ve been perusing the KA website a lot of late. If I baked all the good stuff I’d have to butter my hips to get through the doorway. Enjoy that delish cake – and Many Happy returns of the day!

  52. 52.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: I had never seen that one before, very fun!  I think the writers for Suits wrote the script she’s using.

    Still, I am still going to watch Longmire while I’m on the treadmill just like I always do, instead of reading a book!  It’s sad, I’ve just started episode 6 of the final season, so only 4+ episodes left.  :-(

  53. 53.

    Melusine

    I have to force myself to do a serious pruning of my bookshelves and the kudzu-like tendrils of stacks and piles they continually extend throughout the house when I’m busy reading.

    I also use a kindle, and it’s handy for instant library gratification of items I may not want to own, or transporting Stephen King titles without triggering carpal tunnel. But if I enjoy a book enough to want to read it again, I want to own a copy, not lease it and hope that whatever company holds the DRM software doesn’t expire.

    Plus electronic copies seem to be much more prone to grammatical/spelling errors, which irritates the hell out of me when there are a lot. I know, you can report them via kindle, but I’m not editing books for free. Some of them are really bad, and those mistakes aren’t in the paper copies I have.

    Plus, I love interesting covers, and I like to be able to pass on books I’ve outgrown, or share with a friend. And there are a lot of academically-oriented books I read that aren’t available as e-books.

    There’s something both soothing and exciting to me about sitting in my little library, surrounded by stories just waiting to be read, hundreds of worlds and lives to be explored, or revisited. Stories are one of the most ancient and powerful forms of magic, and they are limitless.

  56. 56.

    WereBear

    Two things I immediately bought again, digitally.

    transporting Stephen King titles without triggering carpal tunnel

    and the equally hefty volumes of the Robert Caro LBJ biographies.

  57. 57.

    frosty

    @piratedan: Sure, they’re still in the house. They’re trade paperbacks – seven of them. WaterGirl can give you my email address if you’re serious. Send her a message.

     

    ETA: Are these some of the ones I’ll regret deaccessioning? Hope not!

  58. 58.

    Melusine

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, I can’t tell if she doesn’t understand the difference between sex and gender, or just refuses to acknowledge it. I’ve only seen some of her tweets on trans issues, but I’m beginning to think it’s the latter.

    Funny that someone so keen on creating a world full of magic and transformation would be so offended by regular people transforming to embrace their true selves. Maybe it’s because she harbors a secret distrust of mundane old mudbloods. Or maybe she only likes magic and transformation that SHE has strict control over. She seems soooo eager to answer fan questions so their fan fiction will stay within the confines of her own imagination.

  59. 59.

    Renie

    I’ve been a kindle reader for some years now but my husband and kids all like reading books.  It’s getting hard to find organizations to donate them to.  My local library doesn’t always want them and shipping them to a place gets expensive.  Would love to pass along so many of the books.

  60. 60.

    Another Scott

    @Krope, the Formerly Dope: Lots of information is online.

    https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/ is a good resource for up-to-the-minute parts lists and caveats sorted by budget.

    https://techreport.com/review/34371/the-tech-report-system-guide-january-2019-edition/ is a more general guide and suggestions for 3 types of systems.  It’s a good place to start if PCPartPicker is too overwhelming.

    As far as assembly goes, it’s tab A into slot B kind of stuff.  Take your time and go with combinations that have been shown to work, and you’ll be fine.

    Finally – pick your budget first.  Decide how much you want to spend and then pick parts to fit that budget.  And remember – whatever you get this year will be slower and more expensive than what you can get 6-18 months from now.  (At least in the Before Times.)  It’s the nature of the beast.  Also, lots of people are opinionated about certain brands, often for no good reason.  It’s good to get quality parts, but parts from every brand can have issues on occasion.

    HTH a little.  Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  61. 61.

    NoraLenderbee

    I gave away about 300 books when I kondo-ized my shelves. So many books I had because I felt I should read them, or wanted to be the kind of person who *had* read them, but that I had no desire to read now or ever. It lifted a burden I didn’t know was there. I still have “aspirational” books, but they are pleasant possibilities rather than reminders of my deficiencies.

  62. 62.

    Jeffro

    I’ve purged our formely massive collection of books down to about two bookcases (1 of books I loved and want to read again before I die; 1 that’s mostly my to-read pile plus a shelf of writing/reference/comic art related)

    we also have about 1 1/2 bookcases of comic book tpbs from favorite series.  Most of those will gradually get donated or sold off over the next three years.

  64. 64.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    @Another Scott: Thank you.  It’s been a long time since I’ve assembled a computer from just parts and only in an academic setting.  I don’t need the most high-end thing, I’m looking more for the experience and understanding.

    Plus I’ve heard I can save money this way, especially since I can focus on replacing just parts instead of the whole system as things age or require upgrades.

  65. 65.

    Mike in NC

    We lived in a three-level townhouse in Alexandria, VA for ten years and I filled every nook and cranny with bookshelves stocked with bargain books from Borders, Barnes & Noble, and several other booksellers. When it came time to move to a much smaller single floor dwelling, I began selling loads of books on eBay and Craig’s List and I’m still in the process of thinning the collection. Books I couldn’t sell got donated to libraries and thrift shops. Talk about things getting out of control…

  67. 67.

    Roger Moore

    @Krope, the Formerly Dope:

    does anyone know a good book or resource about building one’s own computer?

    I think you would probably be better off checking out the web rather than a book.  It’s a topic that changes pretty rapidly, so getting the latest information is important.  I would look at a guide on a web site like Toms Hardware.  They can provide a lot of good information, and they will also link to things like videos demonstrating exactly how to do stuff.

  68. 68.

    VeniceRiley

    It’s a long read, but I feel worth it of you are wondering what could JKRowling be thinking. This guy is far better than, say, Andrew Sullivan on the topic, as he’s always looking for a section of the cuture at which to wag his finger. AND JK helself claims to be coming from a point of past pain (no excuse.)

    https://medium.com/@LogicalMarcus/is-julia-serano-right-that-transwomen-are-female-a989dca9d02
    And then you can read this.  Leave it to the blown up cultural institution of the post-Michigan Womens Music Festival lesbians to help figure this out: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/shannonkeating/lesbian-cruise

  69. 69.

    Fair Economist

    I got rid of quite a few books last year when I was semi-Kondoizing. At least they aren’t shelved two deep now. I did manage to completely free a couple of shelves, but not many.

    At some point I swear I’ll digitize and throw out my CD’s. Promise!

  70. 70.

    Jeffery

    I spent several years carting 700 books a few cartons at a time to the local Goodwill drop off site. No one wants physical books at this point. I expect like vinyl records physical books will come back into style someday.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    I found that getting an ebook reader was very liberating when it came to clearing out my library.  It made me feel much more comfortable getting rid of books that were available in electronic versions.  I didn’t necessarily replace most of those books- I really wasn’t going to reread most of them- but it made me feel as if I could easily replace them if I really wanted to read them again.

  73. 73.

    Fair Economist

    @Jeffro:

    we also have about 1 1/2 bookcases of comic book tpbs from favorite series. Most of those will gradually get donated or sold off over the next three years.

    I reread comics far more than other books. Not sure why, but I have leaned to keeping them more than text books.

    Another issue (so to speak) is that I’m buying increasing numbers of webcomic collections to support the authors. It feels weird to throw them out, and I haven’t thrown any out so far.

  75. 75.

    WereBear

    @Roger Moore: That was my experience, too. I used to go to used bookstores and pick up copies again of particularly good books. Extras for gifts kind of things.

    Almost like I didn’t want them to vanish from human memory.

  80. 80.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: Hap Day of Birth! You are required to eat as much of your own cake as possible.

    The best guess right now is it was a flare up from the transverse myelitis that hit my back in 2005. So I’ll be doing rehab after some treatment (maybe: that’s under debate right now) and then work on recovery from there. I’m stubborn: it will happen.

  81. 81.

    Roger Moore

    @Krope, the Formerly Dope:

    Plus I’ve heard I can save money this way, especially since I can focus on replacing just parts instead of the whole system as things age or require upgrades.

    I think the ability to replace parts rather than buy a whole new PC is the main way you save money.  The big manufacturers can get big enough bulk discounts that their prices are competitive with building yourself even if you price your labor at $0/hour.

    The bigger benefit of building yourself is less that you save money and more that you get exactly what you want. The last time I rebuilt my PC, I decided I wanted to get a system that was as close to silent as possible, so I bought a near-silent CPU cooler, which wasn’t an option if I bought from one of the big brands.  I guess this is an area where you might be able to save some money.  Usually if you buy a PC that has a massive upgrade in one area, you can only get it if you upgrade the rest of the system, but you don’t have to do that if you build your own.

  83. 83.

    James E Powell

    The two things I never like to get rid of are guitars and books. The third time I moved in ten years motivated me to reduce the 36 bankers boxes of books to 14 and put them in storage. I have this fantasy that I’m going to sell them on ebay or amazon or some other site, but I’m not sure how or when that will happen.

    The eight filled shelves, plus the stack next to my bed, of books I’ve yet to read should be enough keep me busy for a few years.

  84. 84.

    WaterGirl

    @Haroldo: Just a few minutes ago, I got an email wishing me a happy 40th.  Depending on the timing when both were actually written, either I am aging exponentially or I am very rapidly decreasing in age!

  86. 86.

    Another Scott

    @Roger Moore:

    you get exactly what you want

    Bingo.

    It’s often cheaper to buy a pre-assembled PC than to build one from parts yourself. Especially if you get a factory refurbished one from Dell or Lenovo or HP. But they often economize on things that may bite you later. Dell is (or at least was) bad about that (non-standard power supplies, motherboards that don’t use dual-channel RAM, etc., etc.).

    But it depends on what you want the machine for, how long you want to spend on it (installing the OS and software can take longer than putting the thing together), etc. Time is finite for everyone. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  87. 87.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I think paper books will be more of a specialty product rather than a novelty.  There are some areas where paper books are still a much better choice than an e-reader.  My favorite example are museum catalogs; paper prints are just a much better medium for that than an e-reader.  I suppose there may be special purpose large format e-readers for things like art books, but I think paper will continue to be popular.

  88. 88.

    Van Buren

    Books are an ongoing battle at my house. My wife says I am just providing food and shelter for silverfish, but I can’t bear to part with the contents of my 5 boxes in the basement.

  90. 90.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    @Another Scott: But they often economize on things that may bite you later. Dell is (or at least was) bad about that (non-standard power supplies, motherboards that don’t use dual-channel RAM, etc., etc.).

    Yeah, this is a lot of the reason I wanted to go this route too.  The last computer I bought, an HP, had equal to better specifications compared to my old system in every way.

    Right out the box, it was slow as mud.  Especially on the internet.  I was able to play with my settings and get a better result, but it wound up being a lot of work.  I want to know my system better.  I want to understand why things are going wrong when they are and I definitely don’t want some unknown cheap part not meshing well resulting in poor performance.

  92. 92.

    Sab

    @Melusine: Did you read her long essay on her reasons? She links to it on her twitter page. “Link to Terf wars.”  I think she makes some valid points. And I have been very angry about her comments for quite a while. I have a trans niece I worry about.

    Rowling’s big mistake was to try discussing anything complicated on Twitter. And I do think Maya What’s-her-name seems awful.

  93. 93.

    eddie blake

    maan, i have SOOOO many bronze age comics i have to move to make space.

    yeesh

    (happy birthday, watergirl!)

  94. 94.

    hitchhiker

    @VeniceRiley:

    Michigan Womens Music Festival

    Holy shit, I’d forgotten that! In 1976 (or 75?) I was living in East Lansing and going to MSU, living alone in a cheap room with a hotplate and feeling like the luckiest person in the history of luck.

    I had this one friend who was painfully coming to terms with her sexuality … very, very painfully. She really wanted me to join her in this process, which neither of us understood at all.

    Alas for her, I turned out to be relentlessly straight.

    BUT, during that summer she and I went to the MWMF! I remember being impressed with the news that women had built the stages, set up the lighting, organized the sound systems, arranged the campgrounds — everything there had been done without benefit of male guidance, supervision, or knowledge.

    There was one thing that I found kind of odd, though … and this might have been nothing more than a rumor. There were no males allowed at all. Not even infants. Not even dogs. Period, no exceptions. So when I read in that article you linked that the festival ended over the question of allowing trans women, it made a sort of twisted batsqueak sense. These people were into purity.

    Also, holy smokes, @Watergirl! Happy, happy birthday. You’re a great person and I’m so happy to know you.

  95. 95.

    Zelma

    Happy birthday WaterGirl.  Enjoy the cake.  I always use my birthday as an excuse not to exercise.  Of course, I’ll use just about anything as an excuse not to exercise.

    I hate to think about all the books I have purged over the years,  When I retired I had 4 floor to ceiling bookcases in my office.  I got rid of just about all of them.  When I moved last time, I had 72 linear feet of books double shelved.  I’m down to 2 small and 1 large bookcase now.  But don’t ask me how many books I have on Kindle.  I don’t want to know.

    The problem with getting rid of books these days is that nobody wants them.

  96. 96.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Jeffery: “the internet” won’t go down permanently barring like actual apocalypse.

    @Roger Moore: fair, I used the wrong word, sort of. It’ll be a novelty to own a paper copy of Infinite Jest, but maybe not a coffee table book or (some) manuals. But who knows what materials science wonders we may see by then—you could have smartpaper blanks with resolution humans can’t even discern that you just load a book into.

  97. 97.

    pamelabrown53

    Late to the party but Happy Birthday,Watergirl. Have a beautiful, blessed day!

  99. 99.

    joel hanes

    My 10×10 storage unit is 2/3 full of boxes of books, stacked six high or more.

    I still hope to move into a house with sufficient space to unpack and catalog them, display the best ones, and re-read some of my favorites.  (O’Brian, Dunnett,  Austen, Sayers, LeGuin, Tolkein …)

    My kids and nieces and nephews will probably not be all that interested when I pass, so I’m hoping to donate the hardbound cream to small-town libraries and the like.

    Meanwhile, I keep buying books I read about, and my Amazon wish list has about six hundred books on it, so I get them for Christmas from the kids.

  100. 100.

    joel hanes

    @glc:

    When I buy a book and discover after reading fifty pages that it’s not for me, a local Little Free Library usually gets a donation.

  101. 101.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @frosty: It’s weird what sparks joy with books. A book I read many times as a teen was Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars. While doing my own book-organizing project, I found that old book I’d loved so much, and also a newer edition. I didn’t remember buying the newer one, but I’m sure I did with the idea of replacing the old beat-up one.

    And yet as I held the two of them in my hands, it was the old one that sparked the joy, while the new one with the “wrong” cover art just sparked “meh”. It’s the same book, the same words, but the print made a difference.

    I’ve also been intending for years to replace the Lord of The Rings trilogy that was bought back in the 1970s and is so beat up they’re not really books any more. But I know they’ll feel weird to me if I don’t manage to find the same editions.

  103. 103.

    mad citizen

    @joel hanes: Reading this whole thread–just to say you’re not the only one with this many books in boxes…

    I think some superrich people should subsidize bookstores and such.  There are a few places now with Books N Brews and such, coffee/beer places where the books are essentially decor and cheap or free, I think.

  105. 105.

    eddie blake

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    i know  exactly that feeling. i have a few books that are just collapsing from being re-read to death. gibson’s ‘count zero’ from was the first book i bought from his his sprawl series (but not the first book) and i literally read it to pieces.

    when i got a newer edition, it seemed so cold to me.

  107. 107.

    J R in WV

    My last big woodworking / construction project was the design / build of a huge set of bookshelves in a downstairs room. We cut 4×8 sheets of plywood into large E shapes, mounted together to create a 16 foot  by 4 foot set of shelves with alcoves between the prongs of the E’s.

    Unfortunately it was immediately filled to about 75% or 80% capacity – plus the big two story garage/shop building has a pile of crates of books. The library room overflowed not long after it was completed in 1994-95. Wife hoards WV history and labor history tomes, I hoard SciFi and we both like mysteries. We have a full set of Nero Wolfe, Travis McGee, Dorothy Sayers, several others.

    But the ability to download Ebooks onto my tablet has saved me storage space for hundreds of books, which I have started re-reading to some extent. Mostly DRM free, actually, tho not all. You can see before you buy a book online whether it has DRM or not. I can’t stand to buy a duplicate of a book I already have, makes me squirm in agony for some reason. So the hard-copies of David Weber will just have to be kept. Eric Flint, many others. Once I find an author I like, I do more of them until I get tired of their style, which happens sometimes.

  109. 109.

    Miss Bianca

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Oh, I haven’t wanted to look. Too disillusioning, if what I hear is true.

    ‘Sfunny, you’d think someone who made so much bank on a magical world would have NO PROBLEM with men changing into women and women changing into men!

    Or deciding they are both, or neither! Transformeamus, and shit!

  114. 114.

    WaterGirl

    @Yutsano: Way late getting back to the thread – a friend came over and we spent some time in the front yard, at a distance.

    So relieved!  And happy to hear that they know what it is!  Also hoping you get some cute rehab guy to work with, or maybe you have one on call?  :-)

  116. 116.

    WaterGirl

    @hitchhiker: Oh my gosh, that is such a nice thing to say!  Thank you.

    I went to the Women’s Music Festival a few times, and youngish kids who were male could definitely attend with mom.  I don’t recall the age cutoff, maybe 8 or 9?

  117. 117.

    WaterGirl

    Thank you for all the wonderful birthday wishes!  For my birthday dinner, I am going to eat only things I haven’t eaten since lockdown started.

    Steak and roasted veggies – new gold potatoes and zucchini from a local farmer.  Except for cake, I will eat more cake.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    @Fair Economist: Agree – they’re easy to breeze through from time to time.  Must be at least partially the nostalgia factor for me.  =)

    Right now Fro Jr is on a “Conan the Barbarian” kick (we have the Dark Horse tpb series).  I can see holding on those for at least a few more years, along with Hellboy, Planetary, Daredevil, and a few others.

  121. 121.

    eddie blake

    @Jeffro:
    I haven’t decided. i wanted to sell the entire collection at once, get rid of the dreck along with the pearls, but none of the local stores would bite before the plague.

    i have pretty decent runs of over a hundred books on a bunch of titles and am loath to break them up, i figure that would devalue them.

    mostly marvel titles, a few dc books, limited series and independents.

  122. 122.

    glc

    @Another Scott:

     “As a librarian, my gut reaction to that was, ‘You know what else is a free library? A regular library.”

    Very strange. To me they serve completely different functions. I’ve seen full-sized useful ones on urban streets in Europe; for all I know they may be considered part of the library system.

    I can give my books to the library and they will sell them off to people who think they might like them (and euthanize the rest I assume). This is basically the library’s own little free library evein if it is not literally free. (That’s always been the default setting for me.) One of the things I had to dispose of was a collection of miniature Shakespeare volumes bound in leather, put out by a leather manufacturer in, I suppose, 1926 or so. Hopefully they found  a home, or homes.

    The main attraction of a little free library, to me, is that you have an extremely limited and random selection. As a user, I’ve had some interesting experiences with that.

    And as mentioned, when I had books that actually would matter to a defined group of users, I found them a proper home.

  123. 123.

    JAFD

    Happy Birthday, Ms. WaterGirl !

    And many many more !

    Also appreciation for the work you’ve put in at BJ.  Thanks!

  124. 124.

    joel hanes

    @Krope, the Formerly Dope:

    HP always loads down their branded computers with auto-start software that you don’t need and probably wouldn’t want if you knew about it.   This bogs performance.

    Get sysinternals autoruns

    Run it on that HP and turn off most of the “helper” and “assistant” and “update checker” stuff.   Google the ones you don’t recognize and decide if you want them.

  125. 125.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @grandmaBear: I agree with you on the “can I get this at the local library” criteria (which means that I will have certain authors‘ works as paperback books forever).  Personally I find that I want my knitting books and cookbooks in electronic format (knitting patterns as PDF to load into knitCompanion, cookbooks on my phone so I can have the ingredient list right in my hand when I’m at the grocery) but I still want my sewing books in paper format.

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