My Bookshelf

Lately it seems that everyone is asking me how I'm doing, in that overly concerned voice that makes me kind of crabby. Maybe because it's mostly coming from my mom and mother-in-law, the two women who I most want to think of me as capable, not fragile. I finally told Mom the other day that if everyone is so worried about me overdoing it at home, they should hire me some housekeeping help!

Well, today I think DID finally overdo it. This afternoon (morning was Bible study time with friends) I did 3 or so loads of laundry, cleaned 2 bathrooms, and vacuumed the upstairs (3 bedrooms and those 2 bathrooms). I also finally got most of the extraneous stuff moved out of our bedroom and back into either the kids' or baby's room. Ahhhh. The bedroom is almost just ours again - at least for another 4 weeks or so, when Mr. Magnus moves in!

My reward to myself for getting all that done was finally unpacking my books into the bookshelf that has been ready and waiting for several months.

I am sooo excited to have this little reading area in our bedroom - which I'll never use, because I'll read where Aaron is, and we hang out downstairs. But it's still a little peace of calm for me, just to know that if I really wanted to, I could curl up here and select any old book.

(Those would be 2 cardigan sweaters and a blanket draped over the back, not dirty laundry. I save the dirty stuff for the floor of our closet.)

And what books would be on these shelves? Well, that was kind of the reward part - I love sorting through and organizing these old friends. All the adolescent lit. is in it's own shelf in the basement, and there are various bookshelves on the main floor with different books, mostly the larger hardcovers. But these are the ones I've read, and reread. Most of them, anyway - I would say generally the top 2 shelves, and some of the bottom shelf.

If you really want to see all the titles, you could probably enlarge the photo or something, but I'll tell you that there is quite a few Agatha Christie, a few volumes of Miss Jane Austen (the full collection is downstairs), The Good Earth trilogy (did you know there were 3 of them?!) and another more famous trilogy - The Lord of the Rings.

And yes, I did get rid of a fair number of books, too - some that I've picked up at garage sales without knowing anything about them, others that are duplicates, and a few that I read but just wasn't that impressed by. And I finally gave myself permission to not have read anything by D.H. Lawrence or Moby Dick. And that, my friends, is a load off my bookshelf.