F This, I'm Getting A Bookshelf

Last year, I decided to be noble and not take up so much space in the spare bedroom with my bookshelves. That space was needed for a twin bed or a futon for overnight guests.

Long story short, I moved the shelves out to the garage where they hold canned goods. The books are lined up along the tops of my dresser, desk and nightstand. The excess books are stored in plastic boxes under the bed.

The spare bedroom still has no twin bed or futon for visitors. Come to think of it, there have been no visitors.

Meanwhile, new books are coming into my life, or perhaps the old ones are breeding, and my bedroom is overrun. Books are stacked up, and while I love a book pile more than most, there's also that overwhelmed feeling.

My first thought was to go through the Bybeeary and cull out some titles, but I don't want to cull and I don't want to stash any more books away under the bed or out in the garage. I love my books and I want them on display. I long to see them on a shelf once more, standing up proudly and vertically with their spines neatly aligned.

Soon, very soon, the spare bedroom will house the Bybeeary again. I'll direct any overnight visitors to the living room couch.

Mid-August Finds Me

I hated the title of this post, then it struck me that it sounds like one of those novels from the 1910s that end up getting reprinted with great acclaim by something like Virago Press. So there it stands.

Mid-August finds me in the middle of several books again:

1. Burr - Gore Vidal. Novel.
This is my main read right now, and I'm enjoying it more than when I read it back in 2012. I can't help but wonder if Lin-Manuel Miranda had a look at Burr as well as the Ron Chernow biography of Hamilton, because I have come upon several passages in which I nearly burst into song. My most recent hum-along is The Room Where It Happens. I'm having a brilliant time!

2. Villette - Charlotte Bronte. Novel.
 I should give up, but I don't. I won't. I can't. I'm 18 chapters in! I predict a mad reading/listening rush to midnight on New Year's Eve. Bronte! Bragging! Rights!

3. Triptych - Joyce Cary. Novel.
Even with the new magnifier, the print in this book is putting me off. I don't know what I'm going to do. Hoping to finish at least the first book in the volume, Herself Surprised, but more and more, I'm just not feeling it.

4. Washington: A Life - Ron Chernow. Biography.
I had to switch to the e-reader edition because I got tired of lugging the physical book around. Also, there were print issues with this one, too. I am so irritated with my eyes for wavering and watering! Stop that, you two! I'll turn this head around, I swear I will!!!

5. The Emigrants - Johan Bojer. Novel.
Written in 1924 and translated into English the following year, this Norwegian novel is about a family leaving Norway and pioneering in North Dakota. Although I haven't gotten beyond the first chapter, this book pleases me on several fronts: It's old. It's about the emigrant experience. It's about pioneers. It's obscure.

6. Heroes of the Frontier - Dave Eggers. Novel.
I was captivated by What is the What, Eggers' novel based on the life of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Heroes of the Frontier seems very different so far -- it starts out with a dentist unexpectedly taking/whisking away her two young children on a vacation to Alaska. So far, I'm drawn in and asking the sorts of questions an engaged reader asks.

Mid-August finds me wanting something very much. I can't even say it here. Not now. But I want this particular thing BAD. On alternating days I'm:
1) hopeful
2) resigned
3) despondent
4) actively snarling and looking for rocks to throw at the "thing with feathers"

Some days, I'm all of those things in succession. Today was like that.

Mid-August finds me running out of shelving space in my bedroom. Time to cull the herd.

Bybeeary in Busan

Behold, the newest incarnation of the Bybeeary.  Since I'm in a studio apartment, this is what I see each morning when I open my eyes.  It's still very much a work in progress.  I'm trying to get the fiction in alphabetical order.  The nonfiction is always a challenge.  I might go with Dewey Decimal order.

The 1st bookshelf (left):
Shelves 1-3: Pulitzer fiction winners
Shelf 3 (right): Flashman books
Shelf 4 (left): Little House series
Shelf 4 (right): Noir collection
Bottom shelf: Baseball books

The middle bookshelf:
Shelves 1-2: Fiction
Shelf 3: Graphic novel collection
Shelves 4-5: Fiction

The 3rd bookshelf (right):
Shelf 1: Books about food, books about musicians, misc. nonfiction
Shelf 2 (left): Books about South and North Korea
Shelf 2 (right): Assorted nonfiction
Shelves 3 and 4: Assorted nonfiction

I'm pleased to have gotten the books packed, moved and unpacked.  I'm also pleased that I was able to get rid of some of the books and get the collection under 500 again.  It's overwhelming when the books spiral out of control, but I think I'd be uneasy if the collection got too small. After all, books furnish a room.  If I didn't have books, I'd actually have to learn something about interior decorating!

Shelf Shots

After my huge book shopping binge in July, my small apartment was overrun with books. Not the best time to be watching Hoarders Season 1. Doesn't that show freak you out? I was getting all sweaty and nervous about clutter issues; I feared that it was time to either double-shelve or worse, "cull the herd".

Rescue came in the form of Jeremy, who is leaving Korea and has a ton of stuff to unload, including a 2-shelf and a 3-shelf bookcase. I asked for the 3-shelfer, but Jeremy thoughtfully pointed out that the shelves can be stacked. Wobbly as my spatial and math skills are, it didn't take me long to appreciate the beauty of a 5-shelf situation.

Long story short -- Jeremy hauled shelf and I crossed his palm with paper. After he left, I hummed and shoved some stuff around in my own little warped bookwormy version of Apartment Therapy:

The new shelves, stacked. I put my still-incomplete Pulitzer prizewinners collection here in chronological order. As you can see, I've now got room to grow the Pulitzer collection. On top of the shelf is The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, a Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a booklet that lists local train times and subway schedules and Leonard Maltin's 2010 Movie Guide. The book next to the yellow pillow is Savage Night by Jim Thompson.

Here's a closer peek at the top of the bookshelf that's in my header. This mixture of books includes books I've borrowed, traded, found and bought in recent months. Also a mixture of unread and partially read.

The shelves below this one house my DVD collection, but the top one is the special place for my full-color collector's edition of Little House on the Prairie books. I think it's pretty clear by now that I'm a "bonnet head".

The Bookshelf Formerly Known As Pulitzer was moved over by the patio door. On top of the shelf is Jeremy's little wooden display thing, which holds my dolls from Mongolia, a matyroshka doll I found in Incheon's Chinatown and two toy turtles. On the next shelf are the Louis L'Amour Sackett series and my reading journals. On the shelf below are some TBRs. A little more than 2 empty shelves make me a happy bookworm, but you know what they say about nature (and it goes double for Bybee) abhorring a vacuum, right?