Flashes of Panic

Last weekend I spent some time rearranging the bookshelves. When the books got here, they were simply unloaded directly on to the shelves as they came out of the boxes; this process not only put them in a more coherent order (which matters only to me) but gave me a chance to unpack three more boxes of them, and to weed out two boxes to move along. (Even at that, some of the shelves in the bookcase are loaded two-deep, with cheap paperbacks hiding behind the more showy hardcovers. I know what’s in there. And still, the computer books are in another bookcase in the basement, and there’s at least one, maybe two more boxes labeled “books” down there as well.)

“Move along” means different things in different contexts. I found about fourteen books, mostly textbooks, worth listing on Amazon, and I’ve sold seven so far. Another, larger box will be donated to the League of Women Voters book sale on the Common in May.

This morning, as I was sending a Discrete Math textbook off to Alaska, the clerk at the Post Office commented on my frequent package-sending, and I described what I was up to. She sighed and said she had a hard time parting with her books, but her husband said she had too many and she had to start paring down the shelves. I mentioned Reader to Reader and she lit right up. “That sounds like a great idea,” she said, and pulled out a sticky to note the name, thanking me for the tip as I left.

So I feel like I’ve given away more books than just my own already—or perhaps, that I gave a lot of gift books, yet kept all my favorites on the shelves.

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