Enjoying this for as long as it lasts

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My bookshelf. Top 2 rows are books I've read; bottom two rows are my TBR, except for that half-filled section. Those are books I've read and the empty space is reserved for books I'm going to finish reading.

Clean bookshelves, that's what.

Life has been extremely busy for the past month, what with all the deadlines at work, planning my son's birthday bash, and cleaning up the house in preparation for the relatives coming for my sister's wedding. Everything got so crazy that I wasn't even inclined to read, so I've only finished one short YA book this month and barely got 12 pages into Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. Not his fault, I assure you.

One thing I'm happy about, though, is that I was able to clean and fix my bookshelf. For the most part, my bookshelf is always a mess, since I kept accumulating books and putting them everywhere, or the kids put their stuff in it, or the kids and I take out stuff and don't put them back in properly. So now that it's clean, I'm recording it for posterity's sake. And, I figure, it'll be nice to look at these pics as a point of reference in case my bookshelf gets messy again.


The three rightmost columns of my shelf. The whole shelf is elevated almost five feet from the ground, on account of our flooding experience a couple of years ago.

Some of my TBR books. Separated the hardbound ones and put them together. Then alphabetized the rest. My system's eclectic, like my reading.

More TBR books. My meager NYRB collection on the bottom right is actually a mix of read and unread books. I just like putting them together because they're pretty that way. Oh, and the David Foster Wallace beside them was just lent.

Top 2 rows are books I've read, 3rd row is TBR, and the bottom row is cookbooks and some old and new reference books.

My goal, which I think I've accomplished, is to make sure my leisure reading books fit only in this shelf. So, I weeded out several really old books and those that I had no interest in keeping. And if you're wondering where these books are and whether I'm going to give them away, the answer is, I already did. My policy is to offer it first to my sister, who promptly took up most of them. The rest, I just plan to donate or discard.

I know it's not that awesome, but I'm proud of having my own bookshelf porn. I caress my clean shelves with my eyes every time I pass by.

So when was the last time you cleaned/fixed your bookshelf?

Comments

Anonymous said…
If this is bookshelf porn (which it no doubt is), then I'm pretty sure I just had a bookgasm. Haha! I'd like to have my own set of shelves here, but as a metro-nomad I'm afraid it's rather problematic.

Congratulations on the neatly shelved books, Honey. A lot of good reads; inevitably, so little time. :P
March 22, 2011 at 12:54 AM
Ruperto Prieto said…
Hi Ms. Honeylein! what a nice bookshelf. laods of books too! Impressive! Wow...Unfortunately, I don't have a proper shelf to store my books, I placed them inside my closet/cabinet along with some of my clothes, some papers, pencils and loads more I won't dare to enumerate. Lol. But someday I would want to have my own shelf the way I envisioned it to be! http://bookablereads.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-of-problems.html
March 22, 2011 at 8:28 AM
triciuhhh said…
Reminds me to clean my bookshelves too! I've been putting and inserting books in any spaces I see and it's a chaos! Haha the last time I fix my shelves was last January :)

I now understand why you challenged yourself not to buy books much. You have a lot of TBR books! How is it going?
March 22, 2011 at 8:55 AM
GatheringBooks said…
Wow. Amazing bookshelves indeed. Which reminds me I need a new set (or sets) of bookshelves - right now my books are bursting out of the poor wooden binding - simply cannot be contained.

Great collection of books too Honeylyn - if I had a bookshelf like yours, I wouldn't leave the house. Hahhaah.
March 22, 2011 at 2:57 PM
Stepford Mum said…
I am so jealous. One day, one day, I will have real library!! Your bookshelves are lovely, dark and deep (thank you, Robert Frost).

The last time I arranged my shelves? Last night. I agonize daily about the state of them as there is really no room left and too many books on them as it is, plus towers of others where they shouldn't be.
March 22, 2011 at 4:14 PM
fantaghiro23 said…
@Aldrin - Thanks, Aldrin. 'Tis the product of four hours of cleaning, sorting, and reshelving.:) And I will get to all of these books eventually. I will!

@Ruperto - Actually, I also removed a lot of pencils, papers, scissors, hair clips, and other what-not from my shelves, so don't worry about the stuff in your shelves. But I am very glad that now, only books are in it.

@Tricia - Yup, I have loads of TBR books. In the future, I'd like to limit my TBR to just the bottom row, or two shelves in the bottom row. Let's see if I can do it.:)
March 22, 2011 at 4:41 PM
fantaghiro23 said…
@Myra - Oh, yes, it'd be wonderful if I could just devote my days to reading the books in my shelves. My ultimate dream life. Alas, life and work beckon. But it actually makes reading time more precious.:)

@Mrs. B - Thank you, thank you for calling my bookshelves lovely, dark, and deep. I love that Frost poem and that line.:) Yep, I used to have towers of books all over the house, too. So I got rid of a lot of books, also because we don't have much room in our apartment.
March 22, 2011 at 4:45 PM
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