Remember last year, when I had all the trouble and anxiety and, well, angst over paring down my 900+ book library to the 100 or so that I really really wanted?
OK. Now imagine that kind of angst, only the books in question are over 100 years old, some priceless, and I haven’t read any of them.
See, I have taken on the task of cataloguing the books in my grandmother’s house, for purposes of estimating their value, and providing some kind of inventory to the auctioneer. Meanwhile, my dad and stepmom periodically ask me if there are any of the books I want or just can’t live without, because my dad is willing to take a few in his share of the inherited goods and pass them along to me.
“Yes,” I replied last night. “I want all of them. I can’t live without any of them. They’re books.”
My stepmother doesn’t entirely understand, but my father does, completely (so does my uncle, by the way, and grandma would understand, too). I remember doing this when my other grandmother died– perhaps this is how I grieve? I go through the deceased’s library? Certainly, one of my favorite things to do is snoop through a person’s bookshelves to see what they like to read. You can learn a lot about a person by the company they keep, and of course, to a book-addict, the company of fictional characters counts just as much as any other riff-raff you might pick up.
In any case, I’m still trying to figure out how I can convert Steggy into a rolling antique book library. I doubt it’s going to happen. Something about me already claiming more than my share of storage in the RV as it is may come up. I will have to let go and say “ah, how wonderful that these books are given to the world instead of being locked away in the attic again!”
Did I tell you about the wheel? Grandma left me a spinning wheel. Just the wheel, though. No frame, no spindles, no flyer head…. just the wheel (it’s a great wheel– you spin while standing or walking beside it). I’m thinking of making a PVC pipe stand for it and having a go.
Tuesday night, John and I played Scrabble with my dad and stepmom using Grandma’s Scrabble set, but not her wacky rules. In her set, several pieces are missing, and she replaced them with pieces from another game. Since you can’t tell from looking at the new pieces what the value of the letters are, those pieces have the values printed on the Scrabble board (you know, the chart with the letter distribution?) That means there’s at least one 12-point “E” and a 1-point “Z” in her set.
We played with standard rules (and values), and I kicked everyone’s ass.
More Meta Stuff:
For friendly LJ-crossposters and others following my blog and being confused by some of the posts in the RV category: they’re being syndicated from my ustravel.today.com blog, and I haven’t worked out all the kinks yet– feel free to ignore them, although Monday and Tuesday’s posts were amusing in the “fun and games” category (I needed something light and quick to write, given the fact that Monday and Tuesday were visitation and funeral days). In an ideal world, you’ll be able to click a link and go straight to the rest of the entry on the correct site. I have that feed set up to send only excerpts right now, and I’m working out the kinks of having it cross-post here, then over to LJ…. and I’m sure you understand why that’s complicated, right? The cross-poster I was using (WP-o-matic) completely failed to do anything it’s supposed to. It would cross-post, but in doing so it cross-posted duplicates, did not pick up feeds automatically, and generally sucked. So I took it down and am trying a different feed plugin, one that unfortunately doesn’t have any “add the source to the bottom of your feed” options. Ah, well.
Edited to add: I’ve now added a “Syndicated” category (and LJ tag) so if the post is coming off of one of my feeds, you’ll know.
Also: I’m happy to entertain genuine, non-spammy comments in response to my sponsored post the other day. Did you hate it? Did you shrug and say “oh, well; at least it’s not total crap.” LJers didn’t see it, I know– that was deliberate, since my LJ is non-commercial, and the sponsored post was definitely ad-oriented. I think I’d entertain a great sponsorship for one of my blogs, but let’s be serious: who would want to sponsor this navel-gazing dreck?
BOOKS – I empathize with your library paring down pains. I’ve just finished boxing up my books to put into storage while I try to sell my home and had to keep reminding myself it was only for a couple months until I move! I did manage to give up a small percentage of the books, which I had planned to donate to a charity shop. However today I came across an alternative – http://www.bookcrossing.com This website is dedicated to the “catch and release of used books” – releasing books into the “wild” and tracking their travels, hopefully around the world. As you appear to be a travelling book-addict, you are ideally placed to start some books on their journeys. (Not your grandmother’s obviously, as it sounds like they are valuable.) Good luck with your cataloguing.