the Dalaverse

I've run out of mental energy for the day (seriously how is it only Wednesday?) so I'm just going to natter on about books for awhile.

The most important step in getting my apartment together was organizing my bookcases. The very tall one in the dining room went first (it's this one in the gray-brown, which matches my TV stand and bar table, which is why it's out there). I spent several hours sifting through boxes before I had it organized the way I wanted it. Those are my "company books," the ones I like having out on display - lots of stuff from college. It goes like this: literature, poetry, drama, lit crit, archaeology and museums, general history, naval/maritime history, British history, science, theology, memoir/biography, oversized books in these categories on the bottom shelf with cookbooks...and then I had about 2/3 of a shelf to fill, so I added Harry Potter and Connie Willis (I actually forgot OoTP because it was in another box. I facepalmed so hard when I found it).

In my room on the left wall is the wide, reddish pine bookcase I've had since before I can remember. It's is a solid, beautiful piece of furniture that I fully intend to be buried with; it was out in the living room at my old place, but I like having it here because I'm most attached to it and it goes well with my bed and new dresser (I love me some knotty pine. Any "Parks and Rec" fans remember when Ben proposed to Leslie in that house she wanted to rent? Pine EVERYWHERE. I was so distracted by my dream house). The top shelf is everything that was most important to me growing up, very loosely organized by ~feels~ rather than genre. Then I decided I wanted to put all my fantasy books together, and that pretty much took up the rest of it.

The third bookcase is smaller and made of lighter wood, and that's where I started to run into trouble. I simply had more books than I had shelves. I'd forgotten that I used to have books on top of the pine bookcase, and also on my library cart which is still at the house, and ALSO on the spare desk which my roommate is now using. I shifted the big bookcase around - put Tamora Pierce and His Dark Materials on top (currently being restrained with pieces of pottery) and was able to fit science fiction down below (the Star Wars novels are resting on top of the oversized SW books lying down, an effect I rather like). For the remaining bookcase, I grouped historical fiction together before giving up and just alphabetizing each shelf. There is a box and a half of books I have no particular attachment to under the bed, and I've ended up with almost a whole empty shelf. So...winning?

I also lined up Patrick O'Brien (incomplete, but still) and my grandmother's Mary Renault books on top of that bookcase. They have small editions of Jane Austen lying flat as their bookends; I'd like to get something globe-themed, maybe. And since I have received Grandma Libby's three remaining Oz books (more on that in a later post), I put them together with my own plus Gregory Maguire atop my dresser. They have the most dubious bookends, but also my stuffed lion and Dorothy Barbie as accessories. I searched Etsy in vain for Oz-themed bookends, but I may have to settle for these nice bronze gears from Barnes and Noble (Tik-Tok is sort of proto-steampunk, so it counts).

As for what I'm reading, the Circulating folder on my Kindle contains the STID novelization (which I am working through very haphazardly), a book about Jonestown (ditto, and it has wonky formatting to boot), A Feast for Crows (which I don't recommend reading digitally because MY GOD you read for an hour and only advance 2%), and the fifth Alexia Tarabotti book, which series I've mostly been having Threepio read to me on the way to and from work. They're fun and frothy, so it works. My bedtime book (actual paper) is Neil Gaiman's new one, which isn't grabbing me (maybe the first person narration?). And I just started rereading the Temeraire series after realizing I'm two books behind. I'm most of the way through the first one, and the first three books are just so, SO good. Some of the best and deftest world-building I've ever seen. I really liked the fourth one as well, but then it started to feel like Temeraire and Laurence were Forrest Gumping their way through the whole Napoleonic world and I was less engaged...which is why I'm two books behind. But I read one non-spoilery review of the next-newest one that promised something closer to the early books, so I have hope.

And that is the story of my books. For right now, anyway. Did I mention that the first thing I want to do with my upcoming extra income (which will go in the work post) is get my first tattoo? It will be this line from A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: "The world was hers for the reading." I'm not entirely certain about the font, leaning towards a sort of inner-knee placement, but I'm ready to go talk to the artist my friend works with and actually get a design worked out instead of talking about it.