I'm up to the multiple boxes of books which have to find their way onto bookshelves in my new place. Yes, I may be a fashion flunkie but I'm a bibliophile and it was very hard to pare back when it came to packing up my book collection. I did give some of the popular fiction away but the rest was salvaged and added to the movers' load. Considering what the movers did to me, I think it was a fair and just reward for their services. There are about 15-20 small but weighty uHaul boxes that I'm working from, in addition to photos and other family memorabilia which will be tackled after the sorting of the books.
I had a friend who once told me that, as she walked through a bookstore or library, she was ever mindful of a "Eureka" moment when a certain book called her name. I do think there is something to this. Once you open a book, there is a great deal of energy being released - new ideas, new challenges which engage the mind and soul and just may change a life. Look at Oprah and her book club. That was a concept that really took off.
As much as we have become a digital and cable population, there is nothing like settling down in your most comfy chair and reading or re-reading a favorite author. As I look through the many topics (big on spirituality and psychology) of the books I'm pulling out of boxes, I am caught between my past and my future. Some of these books brought hope in troubling times; others just made me see the world with a different, less judgmental lens. They were comfort and catalyst. I still have much to learn from their pages.
So, dear books, welcome to my new home and have a seat on the shelf. It's good to have you here.
6 comments:
I shipped (literally) my belongings from my last US home (Chicago) to Austria two years ago. I cried when I saw my books again. (And had a nice nap on the couch not too long after that).
There is NOTHING like a good book. Every now and then, when I run out of shelf space, I go through the fiction ones and sort out a few for the charity shop (but only to make room for new arrivals) but the SEWING and INSPIRATIONAL ONES MUST REMAIN UNTOUCHED!
Unpacking the books is one of my favorite parts of moving. Understandably, MOVING the books is one of my husband's least favorite parts ;)
what velocibadgergirl said!!
i still have a bunch of boxes in my basement storage area - mainly paperback mysteries and other fiction - that i need to go thru and figure out where to put in my now year old apartment.
i miss them - all those Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham and - well the Dorothy Sayers I had to bring up with me.
i am just now (one year on aug 29) getting the LAST boxes in the apt unpacked - as a friend said - if you havent needed it for the last year then you really should throw it.
surprisingly i have been throwing and sorting - these past few weeks have been my own Mission Organization project.
anyway, a few days after i moved in, my landlady exclaimed at seeing a number in the 100's range on a box - i numbered and kept a list (although the movers put all the boxes in all the wrong rooms!) anyway, I said - most of them are books (and yes about half of them were!)
I could have very easily written this post. My last move included 8 boxes of books. Not as much as you but you've been around a little longer...give me time.
My books are not objects but special friends that I return to over and over again. To quote someone who is way better at expressing this sentament than me:
"Every book, every volume you see has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, it’s spirit grows and strengthens."
-Carlos Ruiz Zafon
"The Shadow of the Wind"
(a good read by the way)
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