For the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom (pretty much). I dreaded doing the bookcase because that would mean parting with books. Books!
Now I buy mostly e-books, but I’d accumulated quite a few paperbacks over the years and I knew some had to go. It gave new meaning to Keeper Shelf. Here’s the bookcase:
I should point out that’s the “after.” It’s the best I could do after purging, holding on to each book as I weighed its emotional value. I kept some mediocre books (like some of Stephanie Laurens’s lesser Cynsters), which got shoved in the hard-to-reach back tier. And I put the ones I reach for again and again in front, like Mary Balogh’s Slightly series, as well as Candace Camp’s Willowmere.
The rest were put in a sack that I’ll take to my mom’s.
Eventually.
For now, I like thinking they’re still in my apartment, within reach. Because I have a sentimental attachment to books that got me through some very sad times. And that’s how it should be.
I should also point out that those are battery-operated LED candles. Because if there’s one person who’s capable of catching her bookshelf on fire with candles, it’s me.
