Culling the books

I know I’ve mentioned that I’ve been culling my books before, but in the last few days I’ve done a HEAP! So much so that my muscles were aching by the end of each day, with all the lifting and moving. I brought a box, one at a time, into the room that is supposed to be my office (though I now write on my laptop, sitting up in bed) and then went through it, wiping the books with a damp cloth to remove any dust. Then each book either went onto the bookshelves that I had built in when I first moved here, or into a “give away” box.

When each giveaway box was full, it went into the hallway, which luckily is quite wide. (See the pic on the right) These are all giveaway boxes.

The books on the office bookshelves are very roughly sorted into alphabetical order — you can see the little sticky notes with a letter of the alphabet on each one. The difficulty is, that I can’t tell how much room each letter will take. In my old house I had ten large bookshelves and now I have to fit them into one wall of bookshelves. It’s hard.

I am keeping two free-standing bookshelves, but I need to paint them first. They will contain my childhood books and also my research books. So stay tuned for a painting post.

And in case you’re worried that all this is interfering with Marcus getting written, it’s not. I spend the morning writing — and I usually run out of steam by about one or two PM — and the rest of afternoon is for heaving and sorting boxes. And I have a fellow coming next week to take half the boxes, and the week after that he’ll take the other half.

I thought I was finished, but then I remembered there were more boxes of books in the linen press. (See pic on the left) Sigh. But I’ll tackle them on the weekend.

In the meantime, here’s a pic of half the built-in bookshelves with the very roughly sorted “keepers”

. I couldn’t fit the whole wall in.

I’m leaving painting the free-standing bookshelves until after Marcus is finished, and is off for editing and feedback. And when the painting is done and all the books have a place, I’ll get into the arrangement of all the books in the office in alphabetical order by author — which is how I always organize my fiction. The research books are grouped by subject.

I’ll let you know the minute Marcus’s book is available. I’m thinking of calling it simply A BRIDE FOR MARCUS. What do you think? I don’t have a cover design yet,