The Empty Bookshelf

I recently bought two large bookshelves. Since we moved, and the kids each asked to have a set of shelves in their rooms, and another set got repurposed from 'book' to 'bathstuff' due to limited space in the bathroom... I needed some shelves. I picked up a little set at the thrift shop, but it wasn't enough, so the Ginja Ninja and I headed down to Ikea on a quest.

She's my only kid that enjoys Ikea. The Junior Mad Scientist, like the First Reader, finds it like being trapped in a maze and it makes them want OUT, Noaw! Even though both of them will go with me, but only if we go on a weekday, during the day, when there are few people. Heck, I'm not fond of it on a weekend. Which is why we went on a Friday early, since I'd managed to get out of work earlyish. Long story short, and leaving out all the little things we found, we came home with the shelves I thought I needed. I'd guesstimated, based on the number of book boxes still stacked in the office and living room.

I guessed wrong. I set up the larger of the two sets of shelves over the weekend, and it absorbed all of those books, with plenty of gaps for collection expansion (and one shelf where m'biscuit busted, and I'll have to put an angle bracket in to support the weight of books.) So... that leaves me with one shelf still flat-packed in it's box. I posted on social media that I was thinking about returning it, and the replies came thick and fast: keep it. You'll need it. Put tchotchkes on it, but eventually the books will come and take it over.

Sort of like setting up a birdhouse and waiting for a family of feathered friends to come set up a nest? It does give me the freedom to buy a book rather than have to think 'where am I going to put this?'

this big shelf holds a lot of books, especially as you can see I've double-layered the top shelves from the other side above the loveseat.

Over the years, and most especially the past five years, when I've moved, I've shed books. Like tossing ballast overboard during a storm. Books are heavy, and moving them repeatedly takes a toll. When I moved from NH to OH, I sold something like a third of the library in order to pay to ship another third to OH via media mail. The remaining third was either discarded, or left in storage... but everything that was left in storage was lost. So my library was very slender when I arrived here. It's doubled, at least, but since we've moved twice, I've thinned out more and more that I don't think we need. The First Reader is easy to please - as long as he has his L'Amours, Butcher's, Correia's, Ringo's, Drake's... LOL! I tend to acquire mostly non-fiction in paper these days, aside from my old pulpy paperbacks I was using as research and 'flavor' for the Noir books.

The Ginja Ninja helped me set up a game shelf, too! It's also shrunk over the years, but sadly with the kids growing up and out, I'm unlikely to fill this one more.

So I haven't set up the remaining bookshelf. Yet. But it will go up, and there will be books on it. Right now the plan is for it to go alongside the fireplace in our bedroom, and to contain the Baen hardbacks to match the existing bookshelf in there which is all L'Amour (in paper and hardbacks, thanks, Dad!). I bought a few books over the weekend, in fact. So it won't remain empty for long... and the potential it represents is important. For perhaps the first time in my life I have the ability to acquire as many books as I like. I don't have unlimited money, but if I want to jaunt out to Murphy's, or the Dollar Book Swap, I can. I have a car, the ability to drive it, some cash in my pocket, and if I have the inclination...

No one is going to tell me that books are clutter, and I should hide the few I'm allowed to keep in my bedroom. Friends I have over are more likely to admire the serpentine library than they are to tut-tut my taste in tomes. My husband loves my collection and helps add to it. I'm rich in books, and even though some of them might never get read, despite my best intentions, they make me feel happy and like I am finally whole.

The empty bookshelf represents a certain kind of wealth to me. It's not hoarding if it's books, right?