Nothing to Read

I occasionally suffer from the syndrome of full closet and nothing to wear. This is my own fault. I shop at Goodwill and tend to purchase discount sweatshirts, and when the time comes to donate to Goodwill, I tend to pillage my husband's ratty dress shirts. (This is useful - the sleeves are long, so if I button the cuffs, I can tuck my thumbs through the cuff slits and have gloved hands in the winter. I'm thinking ahead!) I don't buy dress clothes often, and as a result, when I do it's with a complete abandon and utter disregard for anything but aesthetics. I have a nice selection of beautiful things that do not "go" with any of the other beautiful things. Anyway, a problem of my own making.

Which is why I was astounded today to discover this problem with books! Let me be clear - we are not short on books around here. The built-in shelves we designed were the first project we finished after we moved in - they're an impractical 11' high by a staggering 17' wide, and they stay full, despite my best effort to carve out some small spaces for decorative odds and ends. We have a database, so I can say with certainty that the number of books in this house tends to hover around 1400-1500. We have advanced reader copies tucked into every nook and cranny, and we "distill" our books regularly at Half-Price Books, converting four or five small boxes of books into just four or five books. And they know who I am at both local libraries.

For months now, I've been looking at the shelves (and windowsills) and thinking, "I'm falling behind! I'll never get all these books read!" And then all of a sudden, just yesterday, I couldn't find a single thing that fit. I had to resort to "trying" books on, retiring to bed with a large stack with everything from pop culture (Linda Fairstein) to the literary (Margaret Atwood) to the academic (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich). I like trying on books about as much as I like trying on clothes; I just want something to fit, and everything that doesn't fit makes me feel bad about myself. ("Too tight? Too fat!" becomes "Too weighty? Too stupid!") Still, at the end of the day, shopping for books is still better than shopping for dress pants!