Okay, so you have to wonder a bit about having a day for everything and who came up with this one. The fourth Wednesday in January was designated as Library Shelfie Day for organizations and individuals. The idea is to post pictures of your book shelves with their method of organization on social media. I start with a picture that is not a shelf at all but a basket filled with Ezra Jack Keats’ books.
We downsized a couple of years ago so at least half of my collection found another home. Still, there were books I couldn’t part with. Don’t ask if I will ever finish reading or rereading all that I kept – even if I never bought another book or checked another one out of the library. If I started right this minute and read nonstop, I don’t have that many years left! Still, these books surrounding me give peace and comfort.
Now, my “organization” is rather loose, but understandable to me, so here’s the tour of my bookshelves. I’ll start with the shelves closest to the couch. The top layer contains special middle grade books by favorite authors – a collection of Kimberly Willis Holt, Richard Peck, Gary Schmit, and Jerry Spinelli. The next shelf for sheer pleasure is Agatha Christie and Louisa Mae Alcott with the other shelves a hodge-podge of pleasurable or useful writings.
One bookshelf near the piano has an assortment of hymnals, folksongs, and children’s songs that even I can play. With nine months of lessons from a high school piano prodigy, I learned enough that, with some practice, I got to a level that I can play hymns and anything a second grader needs to sing. (The practice came because Daddy was going to volunteer my services or those of one of my sisters when a pianist was needed in the country churches where he was pastor, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed.) The hard stuff that my husband Al can play is in the piano bench.
The most reachable book shelf has books that I will start any day now and my Christmas and Dickens selections.
Even the kitchen has a shelf for books. Many of these have also been in use for a while with really good recipes designated by splotches of the ingredients.
Now let’s go to the she-shed where I work. Next to my desk is a tall bookshelf, for which I need a stool, with middle-grade and young adult titles on the top two shelves in alphabetical order by author. The second two shelves have books about writing and reference books of various sorts. A few classics in literature pop up on these shelves because they didn’t fit anywhere else. The bottom two shelves contain books relating to my current writing, some leftover books from my teaching career that I either loved or with instructions I might use someday, and three notebooks of things I have published in random places.
The other bookshelf in the she-shed contains picture books I couldn’t bear to give away. Some are very much the worse for wear, but where would I be without Ramona, Blueberries for Sal, Miss Nelson Is Missing, and Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book?
Even with the shelves, my house remains like Eudora Welty’s in one respect. If you want to sit down, you probably will have to move a book or two.