FINALLY…a post about books – or at least a book adjacent post – and it comes with a question at the end. (Please pardon my gratuitous use of a photo from The Morgan Library & Musuem in New York – I just love beautiful spaces dedicated to books.)
I love to read, and I buy a fair few books. Some would say I buy far too many books but hey – it’s a passion of mine. For those of you who are wondering, that’s foreshadowing for the question I’ll be asking at the end of the post. I’ll just need to do a little more work to properly set it up.
We love our house and one of the things I love most about it is the presence of a room obviously (obvious to me but reasonable minds can disagree – one of the most reasonable minds I’ve ever known – that of my wife – doesn’t find it to be quite so obvious) built to serve as a small library. It was one of the things I fell in love with on our 1st tour and I secured my lovely wife’s permission to use it as a destination for the books I’d acquired over the course of a lifetime. I’m dropping a few pictures to give you a sense of what it’s become.
That’s my father’s Marine Corps Officers’ Sword hanging above the 1st case – the rest of the room has a distinctive Western / Texas / UT theme. It worked for a while, but it forced me to double stack some shelves and it left me with a lot of beloved titles boxed away in the basement.
As time has passed, the Love of my Life (no truer words ever written) was good enough to include a Living Room bookcase in one of the remodels we’ve done AND add a shelf in our Away Room.
All well and good but it still leaves me with books in the basement – although most are not as meaningful to me as the ones we have on the shelves. The bigger problem is that I have NO MORE ROOM for future acquisitions, and I plan on living long enough to make significant additions to the collection. (Side note – one of the 1st things visitors tend to ask is whether I’ve read all of these, and the answer is – I’m about two thirds of the way through – it’s a retirement project.)
So… here’s the question I promised. I think I may be reaching the upper limit of what I can do here. My Dear Wife is starting to see this more as hoarding than collecting behavior. I simply see it as a storage issue. Please feel free to weigh in and be warned that I may selectively use your comments in future negotiations.
Cheers