Well at last count there are 128 books to read (Books On The Hearth), and 58 books to buy. I have 86 listed as having been read, but that doesn’t account for many that I’ve forgotten about but do not own any longer, as well as some twenty of Stephen King’s, and similar numbers of Christie, Cornwall, etc. Several years ago I also gave away about 200 paperbacks, saving only the special ones and King’s. However, it does appear that unless I speed up my reading (and many that I’m planning for on my to read list haven’t been added in yet; a whole bunch of learning books on a list given me as well as many new novels I haven’t dared add in until I’ve gotten caught up in time) I’m not going to make it unless I live to be a very old lady.
Since I’m stumbling over bookpiles in the living room, I definitely need to either buy or build some bookshelves in a hurry. I’m thinking of one wall being books I’ve read, and the other for the pickin’s. It’s really exciting for me to see what I’ve got ahead of me, with such diversity of era and subject, and loaded with classics, I feel like a library of high reading.
Now obviously what I should be doing is donating these back to the library after they’re read. But I’m a capitalist pig, and ownership means something to me. Hey, it was even a hard thing for me to start buying "used" books; me, who won’t so much as write my name in a sacred volume and desecrate it so. However, once I saw what I could find in the library sales at a dollar instead of twelve, it became obvious that finances would limit my reading and that’s just too crass to even consider.
It gives me pleasure to see what I’ve read, what I can read. Many I’ll go back to (Lord willin’) eventually. And while it seems so very selfish not to put these books back into the system, I’m hoping that when I’m gone, my nieces and nephews will appreciate the collection enough to want to take them home and carry on the family tradition of reading because I know that they all are heavy readers and fine writers themselves.
But I’m sure they’d appreciate a display on bookshelves, alphabetized and grouped by genre. As would I.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology