In Which I Organize Books

Here is a thing that is essential to my nature: I am a lover of books. I am also a collector of books. I find joy and escape in reading books of all kinds, and one of my biggest fears in life is not having anything decent to read!

I had piles of books in several places, and messy boxes of books in others. So on this day, I decided it was time to do some organizing. The end goal is to reorganize the whole collection. This partial effort was the beginning.

I brought a bunch of books up from downstairs, where they'd been sitting, and piled them all over the floor. Then I organized them by major authors, in little groupings back the hallway. (I laughed, thinking of John Cusack organizing his records autobiographically in High Fidelity.) Finally, I put most of them in labeled boxes. Then I ran out of boxes, so some of the books are still sitting in the hallway until I get more.

The authors are names you'd recognize. Stephen King. Janet Evanovich. Jeffery Deaver. Iris Johansen. Michael Connelly. Mary Higgins Clark. Clive Barker. Jim Butcher. Terry Brooks. James Patterson. Lisa Jackson. Heather Graham. Dean Koontz. Nora Roberts. J.D. Robb. John Sandford. Peter Straub. Mysteries, murder, and mayhem!

When you own a lot of books, organizing them can seem daunting. Especially if I think of ALL of them, including the ones already on shelves downstairs. But by biting off a big chunk of it, I felt like I made good progress, for starters. It's not going to happen in a single day, but I can do this!

Here's my soundtrack song for books: Elvis Costello & the Attractions, with Everyday I Write the Book.