Books Everywhere

Books everywhere

There are books all over this house.  In my bedroom, on my desk shelf I keep my favorite titles of recent years.  These are the books I glance at from my bed, mementos from my reading life.  On this shelf there is: The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer, Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue, The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah, Winter Garden, also by Kristen Hannah, Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Fire Shut Up in my Bones, Charles Blow’s autobiography, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, both by Celeste Ng,  Begin Again, by Eddie Glaude, Jr., The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett, two copies, I realize, of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf,  and A Promised Land by Barack Obama.  These are some of my favorite books of the last two years maybe.  Mixed in are a few favorites that just wound up there.

Next to the desk is an actual small bookshelf, housing some books I read years ago, and newer books I’ve never read. Not much is going on with those books.  Should I give to a collection books read years ago that I won’t care to reread?  

Upstairs, really my husband’s workspace, there are two large bookshelves, his and her bookshelves if you will.  His shelves contain lots of rock books about George Harrison, for example, and psychology books. He also saves books like the Fodor’s guide to Alaska from 2002.  If we ever go back to Alaska, I don’t think we’ll be looking in there, but nonetheless, he holds on to that. I have an eclectic assortment of books up there- Shakespeare books and books read but not necessarily my favorites. My husband also believes in making room for newer books by putting some of these in the basement. To me that is book purgatory.  I’d sooner throw books out or give to a collection. Books we’ve saved from college that are yellowed need to be thrown out, not condemned to a dreary, cobwebbed basement bookshelf. If I ever decide to read War and Peace, I’ll get a fresh new copy.

In the downstairs den, where I keep a lot of my work stuff, I have tons of YA books I took home after I retired from middle school, books from NCTE conventions or ordered from Scholastic.  There are so many books down there, that when a neighbor sent a group text to the block if anyone had an extra copy of Catcher in the Rye while we were on lockdown, I could help out. I tutored a lot before the pandemic, and my YA books came in handy. I also have my writing project books and books on teaching writing that I use for my community college classes in the den.

So there you have it.  The books have taken over, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be reading books on a Kindle any time soon. I need actual books.

Do you have books residing everywhere in your house?