How Shelvish Of Me

For a long time, we had a couple of sets of metal shelves. They were made of metal but colored with a faux wooden pattern. When empty they were fairly light, though they tended to make a kind of bwang! sound when they were moved, sort of like a cymbal, and could easily fall apart, the shelves from the supports. Where they came from, I’m not sure. I have two theories: one that we got them from Green Stamps, and the other that we might have got them from the Watchtower Society, as we used them to store our ‘study literature.’ I think they turned up about the time we joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses, though that might have just been a coincidence.  One set used to be in the dining room, the other in the Toy Room closet. Once we left the Witnesses, I eventually co-opted one for my own books; the other got bent and was discarded at some time or other. I used the one for a long time; I don’t remember exactly when it too was discarded. But here’s a picture of when I was using it; it had a decades long presence. [Or was there only the one, that just got moved around?]

I guesstimate I’ve only got about half of those books still. Maybe only about half of the knickknacks on the top shelf, too. As a bonus I include a close up of the wizard oil lamp; as you might be able to see, I had a dragon oil lamp as well, since broken. I bought them long ago at Paper Bear, because – well, wizards and dragons. Never used them.

"And the Walls Came A-Tumbling Down"

Ten days ago, I wrote this:

“I have always liked to have my books on shelves (or at least in drawers) so that they would be somewhat available. But now I’m thinking about … well, not selling any books, but maybe putting some up in bins, thinning the herd as it were, to get easier access to what remains.

“This would be an enormous undertaking, and very finicky if done correctly. Every bin would have to be catalogued and labeled so I could find what had been put away more easily. Books would probably have to be grouped according to size, not subject matter, and that would discomfort my fussy nature, like an itch at the back of the brain. And where would I put the bins? My little house is already almost stacked to the gills.

“Anyway, it seems to be growing into one of those restless Fall projects.”

Yesterday (Sept. 19), at approximately 8:45 AM, the Universe gave me a goosing as a bit of a prod to get on with it. With a sudden crash and a clatter, two shelves of a five-shelf bookcase came tumbling down. Fortunately, there was nothing breakable on them (mostly Pogo figures and Crest animals) though the box with my Harry Potter light-up wand may have got a new nick in it. Happily, none of the books landed badly or with bent pages. Those two shelves had always been a bit precarious and needed careful loading (only one of them had had a half a line of books). Now that one shelf was (as far as I could tell) totally out of commission.

My heart sank and I could feel the fluid draining from my spine in dread and weariness. I picked everything up and moved it out of the way as best I could. I could do nothing about it right away; my niece Kelsey was coming over to hang out with me and Kameron. We spent the day watching the first two volumes of The Groovie Goolies; I had shared the show with them when they were younger and now it was part of their childhood nostalgia. As we shmoozed and nattered and looked up trivia (Who did that voice? Who was that character based on?) my ruffled spirits were smoothed. But there was always going in the back of my head: where can I move these books? How can I get this all set up again?

When Kelsey left at 3 PM, we noticed Susan sitting out sunning herself, trying to dry up her running sinuses. We all went over to talk to her. I took the opportunity to talk to her about plastic bins. As it turns out she had forty extra left over from her Great Cleansing and was more than happy to let me have four of them to use for my sorting. Maybe not this weekend, but soon. So that obviates any extra expense. Thank Heaven (and Susan). Storage is beginning to get mighty costly.

I spent most of the evening reshuffling things and patching up what I could. It inevitably reminded me of the Mad Tea Party, with everyone moving one space down to get into new seats. At last, by 9 PM things were, if not settled down where I imagine they ultimately will be, at least in such order that my mind could rest for the night. Everything was a bit cleaner and better organized. I had had a lot of Dana Gould on the YouTube while I worked, and I was in a more jovial mood. Altogether the day ended on a better note than I could have imagined when it began.

Here's how the shelf looks now:

Compared to some of the shelves I see on fancy podcasts and videos, it looks like the efforts of some mad sort of cargo cult, but it fulfills my needs for the moment.

More Mutters, More Matters

I thought I would go ahead and show a few more of my books and circumstances. Here is my desk, where I composed A Grave on Deacon's Peak and do all my computer business. I do not think it will ever be donated to a library. It is basically the two boards of my old computer desk, now supported by two shelves, festooned on the sides by wires and a powerboard, and tucked snugly into one corner of the room. That line of books on top is volumes of the Ignatius Press Collected Chesterton; as many as there are that is less than half of the series. The shelf underneath is double-stacked. Visible on the bottom are books by Neal Hancock, Michael Moorcock, Katherine Kurtz, and Lloyd Alexander.

The other supporting desk shelf. Of particular note are books by and about Robert Graves, Howard Pyle's Arthurian series, works of literary criticism, and anthologies. That bottom shelf is usually completely covered by the loveseat.

A couple of little shelves with all of my DVDs. The one on the right is dedicated to anime; you can see my Dragonball series. On top of that shelf are plastic drawers that contain lots of my action figure accessories: separate drawers for axes, swords, armor and helmets, and so on. There is one whole glorious drawer for oddities such as hats, umbrellas, candles, and other arcana. It's all on top of a dresser, the contents of which are our next subject.

Some of my better paperbacks. Blaylock, Donaldson McKillip, Powers, Gaiman, Pratchett, Cabell, Lovecraft, and Lewis. All can be pulled out for easy access. 

And here at the last is the one drawer in the Tolkien Shrine that still has books. It contains some of my oldest Tolkien, from The Tolkien Reader to the original A Guide to Middle-earth (both of which I toted around at Briesemeister Middle School) to my Gold Boxed LOTR&The Hobbit. Also hidden away are my most shameful Tolkien-related books, The Sellamillion and The Wobbit. I wish I had taken a few seconds to straighten it up after I opened the drawer too quickly, but Kelsey (who again took the pictures for me) was on her way out the door, and in my haste I didn't notice. But note the Gandalf Glass Goblet that Kenny gave me.

My Favorite Mutt

 

If you’ve seen the very first post of this blog, you’ve seen the above picture: it’s the scan of a photo I took years ago at Loop Drive of one of my shelves. Looking at it now, I can see quite a few volumes that are now in the Shadow Library, including this book club edition of Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales that I hadn’t recorded yet. 

Of course, in those days it took real film that cost a bit of real money to make those pictures, and then later a scanner to copy them into jpegs.  Nowadays, if you have the right phone, a good high-resolution picture is basically free and instantaneous. Well, I don’t have the right phone (its camera is very low resolution), but my niece Kelsey does, and after I’d asked her, she’d taken some photos and sent them to me over Facebook in about 10 minutes.

I suppose if I had a dog or a cat, I’d want to post pictures and talk about it all the time. But what I do have is a library. And I’ll be the first to admit that my library is a real mutt.

Part of that is because I’ve been building it for a long time. For example, I bought Terry Pratchett books first from the Science Fiction Book Club (in their rather flimsy editions), then got paperbacks from Del Rey, then Roc, then Harper, then started buying good hardbacks whose cover styles changed over the years. I remember reading a story where a scientist produces a cat that exists simultaneously present at every stage of its life, from kittenhood to a ratty old moggy; it looked rather like an animated furry carrot. If I put all my Pratchett on one shelf, it would be just such a furry carrot.  

I see a lot of people on YouTube, reviewing books and showing off their shelves. They tend to have spiffy uniform editions of series, beautifully uniform shelves, and even strikingly uniform backlighting on those shelves. Some have wonderfully curated curios, many of them not even out of the box. Such libraries, with books that are so carefully cared for that they look unread and are never stacked on top of each other, are obvious thoroughbreds. But I wonder if they are little more than status symbols, and if they can really be as well-loved as my old mutt.

Anyway, here are the pictures we took. These are the main shelves; there are smaller shelves (two that hold up my computer “desk”), some plastic bins, and even drawerfuls of books in dressers. Let's go through them, shall we? You can click on each picture to examine the details.

Now here are some shelves that are actually built into one end of the house. The books include the Wildlife Encyclopedias, the Man Myth and Magic series, folk and fairy tale collections, kids and cartoons books, Samuel Johnson, Gore Vidal, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. LeGuin, Lafcadio Hearn, John Crowley, T. H. White, and others. Kind of hard to reach, but I manage. 

This is another shelf built into the wall; it is where another door used to be. The first four shelves are mostly kids' and Young Adult books. Here we have J. K. Rowling, Jeff Smith's Bone, Alexander Key, John Bellairs, Kenneth Grahame, and many Scholastic books. The bottom shelf has Peter Ackroyd, A. N. Wilson, books on writing, and the end of the Complete Peanuts series. Unfortunately it also supports one of my essential but messy power bars.

Here are a couple of shelves and a dresser that are (of necessity) behind my couch. On the left is Madeleine L'Engle, Mervyn Peake, Robertson Davies, some Penguin Classics, Peter Kreeft, some biographies, and most of the Complete Peanuts (with an old Avon shampoo bottle in the shape of Charlie Brown). Continuing down behind the couch is a space made when one of the shelves collapsed; there are more Penguin Classics, Patricia K. McKillip, Japanese folklore, and others. On the middle dresser are the Gold Key Comics Digests; in the drawers are some of the fancier action figures. On the right shelf are G. K. Chesterton, Tim Powers, and James P. Blaylock; on the shelves behind the couch is the Storisende edition of James Branch Cabell and my annotated editions of classics.

And these are built-in shelves in the kitchen, probably intended for pantry storage. On the top are more kids books (including Scholastic), then L. Frank Baum, and then the next two shelves more folk- and fairy-tale stuff. Note my Saruman staff and the box on the shelf with the Elder Wand from Harry Potter.

This is what I like to call my "Tolkien Shrine". It is made of a china cabinet 'hutch' that used to belong to Nanny, placed on top of a large set of dresser drawers. Besides the books you can see, the dresser drawers contain (on the left side) all my Tolkien action figures, from Bakshi to "The Hobbit Trilogy". In the drawers on the right are LPs, calendars, games, and one drawer of paperbacks, all Tolkien. Very prominent: my replica of Sting. 

Interesting sidenote: when I was in high school, I drew this picture of my proposed Tolkien Shrine. Books would go in the top cabinet and items in the bottom. And now, though nowhere near as ornate (or small) as this, that's pretty much how it works!

I like to call this shelf the Inklings Annex; it's right next and at an angle to the Tolkien Shrine. Susan and Andy bought me this at an estate sale; while most of my brown library shelves are the particle board stuff you can buy at Wal-Mart, this is made of real solid wood. On top and on the first two shelves are Tolkien DVDs, video games, and biographies. The next has Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and so on. The bottom two shelves are dedicated to a Mr. C. S. Lewis.

And at an angle to the Annex, more particle board; on this one it was the top shelf that collapsed. Here we have Hilaire Belloc, Terry Pratchett, Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell (that's that black hole on the shelf: Frank C. Pape editions), Neil Gaiman, and others.

This last unit sits right next to my computer desk. It is a black iron display shelf, another item from Nanny that Mom inherited and that came to me. The books on it are there mainly because of their size. It has the Absolute Sandman volumes as well as other comics collections (including Oz, Man-Thing, and Weirdworld). There are books about fantasy, illustration, and myth, as well as tall children's books like "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". On the bottom are all the Enchanted World books, and those three volumes turned on their side are the first three Pogo collections. 

The picture is a little marred by the wires. They are there because I have the only old boxy TV (a huge antique monster) that still has connections ports for the Wii; Kelsey and Kameron come over to play. The game system is on the top shelf. As I understand it, someday an adapter will arrive for Kameron's own TV, and then things will go back to normal. But I'm not holding my breath.  

So, as you can see, my mutt of a library is kenneled any old how. Chance and necessity has built it over the decades, and now a certain amount of inertia governs its organization. It's not pretty, but I love it, and I know where everything is. Well, mostly. They say dogs look like their owners and owners look like their dogs, and my books are a pretty good portrait of me.