Merry Wanderer of the Night:
bookshelves

I moved into my townhouse with three bookshelves and they were completely full right away, so I knew a new bookshelf was in my future eventually. I finally got sick of all the random stacks of books around the house towards the end of last semester and yesterday I bought the bookshelf. It's the biggest bookshelf I've got so far. Apparently I've become more realistic about my growing library. I'm amazed by how many of the books I own I've purchased since I started blogging. Apparently I just didn't know what books to buy before my blog and now I'm constantly bombarded with books I want to read plus I find ones on my own. Book blogging has definitely changed the way I approach shopping in a bookstore-- but that is a post for a different day.

The bottom shelf is games and children's books, two things that didn't really have a home in my house so it makes sense for them to go on a fairly empty bookshelf. Above that is about two shelves of unread books. Just by looking at my bookshelves it seems like I'm finishing one shelf of books for every shelf of new books, which means I'll never get past that one bookshelf worth of books I haven't read. I'm pretty okay with this ratio right now, obviously I would like to read more books than I'm taking in. The worst part is that I have two shelves of books that I've owned for a long time but still haven't read. When I look at the books I think I want to get to them someday, but I don't want to read them as much as the new books I bought in the last year. I should probably get rid of some of the books I haven't read but I honestly think getting rid of books is a humongous pain in the butt.

The second shelf from the top houses literary magazines which were previously under my coffee table. This collection is only going to get bigger in 2011 because I not only have a subscription to The Believer (my second year with it) but I have one to McSweeney's as well. The very top shelf has some beer bottles from Germany on it. Not much to do with books, I just thought they were pretty.

Have any of you gotten a new bookshelf recently? Do you need one? Are the stacks of books taking over your house?

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This week has been a little jarring. It was the fourth week of classes, although it didn't really feel like it. Homework is starting to get heavier, and I have a midterm in a little over a week. I can feel the stress coming. When I'm stressed I like to clean, so on Thursday night I decided to reorganize my bookshelves.

I reorganized them by books I have read and books I haven't. I was actually quite pleased when I discovered I've read a lot of my books! The two bookshelves on the left are all books I have read, and the bookshelf on the right are books I have not. The book on top of the middle shelf are books I have not read yet, but those are the books I want to read really soon. The books on the top shelf of the unread shelf are books I'd like to read soonish, and then they decrease in importance as the shelf goes down. I thought maybe when I got to the bottom of the shelf I would find some books I want to get rid of, but I actually want to read most of them, just not right now. A lot of them are Victorian novels which I haven't been in the mood for recently.

Earlier this week I posted the start of a readalong for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. A lot of people have responded and said they'd like to join but don't have time. I've decided to extend the amount of time the readalong will go for. We will now discuss the book on November 1st, and hopefully this will give people more time to get the book and read it as it's rather long. I really hope some more people join! I also heard that the link I posted for Awesome Essays yesterday wasn't working for everyone, so I changed the link and hopefully now you can read The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf with ease. And after some request I've decided to bring back Children's Book Thursday, so check that out!

Okay- back to homework!