The Bybeeary Goes Splitsville

For the first time in a decade, I am living in a room that can't fit all my bookshelves. Buying a smaller bed was not an option, so I had to put one bookcase in my bedroom, and the other two in the spare bedroom.

The Pulitzer fiction sleeps with me, of course.

Don't worry, I told the others. I'll visit you often.

And I do.

Moving? What the hell; it's been about a year since the last time

Why? We need a place where Mom doesn't have to deal with steps when she gets out of the nursing home.

The good:  No steps, (it's a duplex) a walk-in shower, a real neighborhood with sidewalks, a patio,  helpful friends, just around the corner from our current place -- not an international move!

The bad:  Not everything will fit into the new place, and Mom has a ton of stuff.  28 years in the same place will do that.  Not to mention an ardent relationship with QVC.  Despite the lack of space, Mom doesn't see the beauty in culling, weeding out, downsizing.  I read Marie Kondo (again) and weep.

The silver lining: We can continue to rent the garage at the current place, so it will be used for storage. When summer comes, Mom can go through everything and see if it sparks joy.

The cloud: If I know her, though, there will be a blanket statement: "Shut up. It all sparks joy. Now put that garage door down and let's go get a strawberry limeade and get back home before QVC starts fashion hour."

What Mom doesn't know yet, heh heh: Although she embraces and champions chaos, I have arranged the clothing in her new closet in ROY G BIV order. It's gorgeous! Take that!

Looking forward:  After 3 weeks, we are finally done packing up Mom's stuff. Moving day is this Friday, so now it's time to do the fun part: My room! My books! Let the joy-sparking commence!

See you from a brand-new room.

P.S. I can't believe it! This is my 1,000th post!

The Book Diet

Not the one in which I would eat just books (although I once had a dog who had a taste for Cheever) and not this one, either, (although I am intrigued by the premise).

The book diet I'm speaking of is the one in which I turn away from the cornucopia that is Amazon.  I also need to run right out and avoid my local bookstore in Korea, Kyobo, and the local in my hometown, Reader's World.  Oh, and the beautiful little used bookstore in Busan!

I haven't bought a book since March 21.  I'm feeling crazy and forlorn.

I'm moving next year, March 2015.  MOVING moving, as in back to the States.  Yes, I'm repatriating, after ten years, and so are the books I've bought/been given.  I had already cleverly worked out that it was going to cost a lot of money to ship these overseas,

so I began buying e-books.  I mean, buying and BUYING.  Buy Hard with a Vengeance.

"My name is Bybee and I'm a One-Clicker."

 It's so easy.  Amazon gives me what I want, and my book desire is satisfied in a moment and forgotten. Then at the end of the month, my credit card painfully removes a huge chunk of money from my account.  Of course by that time, it feels like they're being unreasonable, and even a tad sadistic for no reason.

To return to the US in reasonable financial shape,  I need to rein in the spending and get a handle on my book compulsion.  It hurts like hell being stalwart and all that, but luckily, I have the Busan Book Swap and my beloved BEL, the Busan English Library as resources to fall back on.  They'll have to feel like book-shopping experiences.  I'm doing both this upcoming weekend, and none too soon, either.

This restraint doesn't feel at all natural.  It's like trying to get dressed using just my feet.

Bookworm in Busan

I've been checking and re-checking just to be sure, and it's official:  This city was made for me.

It's a marvelously elastic place -- room for the boisterous, athletic types who must hike up the mountains by day and bathe themselves in the neon glow of bars by night and there is also space also for sedentary bookworms who like nothing more than to sit at the beach(es!) reading with shoes and socks off and toes stuck down in the cool sand.  There's also cutely-themed coffee shops with quiet corners and chairs with comfortable cushions to squish down into.

Deliberate calculation is not something I excel at, but before this somewhat reluctant (I can't believe my ambivalence now) move to Busan, I decided to place myself near the center of the city since I had to find my own apartment anyway.  Worked like a charm. I'm exactly 30 minutes from my workplace by subway.  I'm not that great at math, but I managed to work out in a flash that going there and back home again = one hour of reading time. A few extra moments can be squeezed in if I start while waiting for the train to arrive, and use the time on the shuttle bus that goes to the university.

Going the opposite way, I'm approximately 30 minutes from the aforementioned beaches.  At the closest beach, Gwangalli, there's a sweet little New-Zealand themed bar called Beached, and this bar is the home of the Busan Book Swap, which has been going strong for about two years.

In a perfect world, there would be a book swap every single weekend, right?  But this is Busan, my almost-perfect world, and what better consolation than the English used bookstore/cafe/bar, Fully Booked, which is about 20 minutes away by subway?  They have a fresh and quirky selection of used books, and it's also a popular hangout for people to meet and play board games.  Book browsing and game playing can make a person hungry, which the owners of Fully Booked fully understand, so they also offer delicious paninis. Since the weather was still a bit chilly when I arrived, I was most appreciative of their mulled wine, but now that it's warming up, I'm getting even fonder of their sangria.

That's my sangria.  Delicious.  It had raspberries in it.  And I found The Dud Avocado, which I've wanted to read for years.  Successful visit!

Gotta say, I'm a pretty happy bookworm.

January 2013: Good and Bad and Moving and Les Miserables

I've been bad and I've been good...but I'm gonna have an Aviance night.  No, I'm not.

The badness: I've neglected my blogging.  I almost announced a hiatus because I feel so fragmented about changing jobs and changing my plans from moving back to the US to moving to Busan and getting all my paperwork in order.  Not only do I feel fragmented, my brain feels like the witches' brew in Macbeth.  Every day, one more ingredient is thrown into my seething, teeming cauldron. Moving again!  Aaargh, the books.  The packing of boxes, the ruthless paring down.  What I really love is having moved rather than the actual process.  Anyway, no hiatus for this blog.  I haven't stopped in almost 9 years and I won't stop now.

 More bad-osity: I keep wavering in and out of the TBR Double Dog Dare Challenge like a radio station slightly out of range.  It's not A.D.D.  My friend Teri got me into listening to audiobooks from the library, and no matter how much I squint at the dates, and mumble stuff about Lunar New Year they were checked out after the TBRDDD did commence.

Surprisingly, I haven't put a big 'Fail' sign up.  I was gentle-Marmee with myself. I climbed up to the garret and gave my inner Jo an apple and patted her hand (that was interesting) and kindly but briskly told her to just see how many TBRs she/I can read before April 1.  It worked.  I was back on track quicker than you can say blancmange.

So where is the goodness in all of this?  The reason I was Marmee-nice to myself and permitted myself a slight swagger on occasion is because I finished Les Miserables this month!  I loved it and have plans to read it again, but it was like boot camp with a French accent and a slightly daffy drill sergeant.  Who the hell stops a perfectly riveting storyline to go on and on about Waterloo?  Slang?  The history of Paris sewers?  The slang and the sewers were right up my alley since I'm an EFL teacher who has a secret fascination with anything to do with merde,

even though I don't pronounce it properly.  Is is mared or mare-day or do I say mare then swallow-gargle that last bit?  But Waterloo!  I was OK for a while, then I got up and started singing and playing ABBA:

I got irritated with Hugo's ramblings, but admired his moxie.  Also, I have to cut him some slack:  Dude was homesick for France.  I get homesick all the time, so I know the symptoms.

Another time I got distracted was when Victor Hugo was talking about Marius' handsomeness, and mentioned his slightly flared nostrils.  I tried to continue, but then was compelled to get a mirror and check my own.  After that, it was time for work, so I went in and sized up everyone else's nostrils.

Anyway, I'm happy I finally got it done. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I remember reading a synopsis of "Less Miserables" and thinking it sounded like a good book: A guy named Gene Valgene steals a loaf of French bread.  I like French bread!  A mean policeman chases him for 20 years.  There's also a girl, like me.  I was outraged to find that it was impenetrable, in spite of going at it with all my fledgling reading powers.

I find my Les Miserables reading project to be useful to others.  When people talk to me about the musical and express confusion about a certain point, I pipe up:  "Well, in the book..."  I'm trying to offer up my knowledge in a sweet, have-a-bite-off-of-my-chocolate-bunny's-ears way, but I can also see how I might come off as nerdish and irritating.

This post feels too long already.  You're probably thinking  fermez and C'est fini! so I'll discuss the other books I read/listened to in January next time.

I Love My Books, I Hate My Books, I Love My Books, I Hate My Books, I Love...

There is no end, and I can barely remember back to the beginning when I decided that moving from a studio apartment to a one-bedroom apartment was just the thing.  

The sum and total of my life now is books and boxes.  Finding boxes.  Filling boxes.  Taping boxes.  Running out of tape and going to the store for more.  Looking through the recycling for more boxes.*  Going to the post office and buying boxes.  Going to E-Mart and carrying out my groceries in a box that I can use later.  Putting books and books and books and books in these boxes and always, always seeing the shelves more than half-full.  In this case, half-full does not indicate optimism.

I've also culled nearly 100 books from the collection.  I'm still being judicious about it, but I'm about to topple over into ruthless culling.  It hurts to cull.  It hurts to not cull.  It hurts to stand hovering with a book in my hand for a half-hour, unable to decide between the two piles.  Moving day is approximately 18 days away.

Shoulda been a stamp collector.

*I was heading down to recycling every day with a spring in my step until Teri told me that the rats run through it.  Now I approach the place less often and with more trepidation.  Thanks, Teri.

Books On The Move

Oh, come on, I know you've got more books than that!

After seven years in Korea, I'm finally going to move from a studio apartment to a one-bedroom apartment.  This highly desired piece of real estate is just across the parking lot in the same complex, so my move won't be the big production it was back in 2009.  Still, it will be somewhat of an undertaking because of the approximately 550-600 books that must move with me.  (It was around 300 in 2009.) Unless I can assemble a team, it's going to be like eating the elephant.

Upon hearing about the move, my son compared me to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872),  the famous book hoarder, and frankly, a guy after my own heart.  In his lifetime, he amassed thousands of books and manuscripts. Much of the latter was on vellum.  Phillipps moved house only once.  His family's possessions took a couple of days to move.  His library took eight months with a team of strong men working from dawn to dusk.  Is vellum heavy?  Just curious.  Luckily, that's not one of my challenges.

For a hilarious account of Phillipps' obsession, check out this book, which is where I saw the above anecdote.  The chapter devoted to him is titled "Crazy About Books".   Many of Sir Thomas's questionable antics with books have my WTF? light blinking rapidly, but I also sheepishly harbor some admiration for him because he went overboard and with such gusto.

I'm going out to look for some sturdy boxes now.