Tuckered out today, and planning to do very little — a grocery run this morning, but otherwise zilch. This evening I’m going to a concert in London, but crucially not driving — I’m an invited passenger, oh bliss!
I put away all the books yesterday, a job that took hours because I’m such a neatnik. The library is so much reduced that the five remaining full-height IKEA Billy bookcases are only two-thirds full. This was deliberate, as there’s a good chance that, in my next abode, the big Victorian glass-fronted bookcase in the sitting room will have to become a china cabinet.
I am now a high-volume user of e-books and audiobooks. As I reloaded the shelves yesterday, I had a long think about the real books I have kept, and why they made the cut: in most cases, it’s entirely emotional. I can’t part with “Archie and Mehitabel” by Don Marquis, or the tattered collections of poetry that our Dad used to read aloud from when we were very small. “The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery” has almost disintegrated, but where else could I find “The Tale of Custard the Dragon”? And then there’s the art books — they don’t work at all in digital format, and I still have a lot of them.
But why do I still have jeezly great dictionaries when the OED is on line? Riddle me that!