Cold and sunny in Stratford.

I'm sorting the library, and it's taking longer than I expected -- not because I can't decide what to let go, but because my first cut hardly filled a single six-shelf Billy bookcase. I know I would regret it if I were to dump the lot, so I have to resist the nihilistic urge and go through the process more thoughtfully.

There's a lot of specialized military history on those shelves, and that I definitely don't want to keep. But what about the books about Victorian tourism, the development of rugby, the spread of Calvinism in France, and the foreign policy decisions that got Britain into the Seven Years' War? Right now, I still have the attention span of a cat and congratulate myself when I finish one of the New Yorker's longer articles, but surely that won't last. In another year, or maybe two, things will be different and I'll be ready for a biography of William the Marshall or "The Age of Scandal" by T.H. White.

Nobody's pushing me to sell up and move so down-sizing isn't a priority, but I confess that I'll be relieved to have fewer books to dust.