This is more exciting than anything ever! Not book shelves, but the fact that someone submitted my very first dare for this blog. Thanks to someone named Lisa, for the straightforward dare to write a new post, haha. That makes sense given the lapses in between previous posts. I had this New Year's non-resolution to write at least every Friday, but that hasn't been happening. So, here I am.
My mother-in-law happens to be named Lisa (a.k.a. Lisa-Mom), so I thought perhaps she had stumbled across an old link posted to Facebook, but when I asked if she'd read my blog, she sounded befuddled and told me that she has no idea how to get here. That is for the best, as I've decided that sharing it on Facebook is a little too obviously attention seeking, and also, we don't need Lisa-Mom thinking I am any weirder than she already knows. We like to drink Mexican tequila together and make fun of our husbands. Lisa-Mom is the best.
So back to the topic up there in the subject line. Book shelves. I was thinking about how book shelves have factored into my life over the years, as I shelved my entire meager collection of physical books yesterday on a brand new IKEA shelf acquired from the neighbors, who bought a shelf too large for their space and sold it to me because I am never one to pass up a new opportunity to rearrange my house. I carried all of our books down stairs from where they have been languishing in the guest bedroom where two new, wary cats currently live under the bed. The cats were FREAKED OUT by me running up and down the stairs, rushing in and out with arms-full of torn, water-damaged paperbacks and oversize, out-of-date computer science texts (that's all the husband). It feels as if the books have been in hiding up there in this rarely-used room. It's nice to have them in the land of the living again. I attempted to classify them using Library Thing, but the computer science books were taking far too long, so I decided to save the organization for another day, and instead spent my afternoon arranging books and kick-knacks in an attempt to style the new shelf in designer fashion. It's got a ways to go, but I enjoyed myself.
I've always been a dilettante, and book shelves are no exception to that rule. They have come and gone in my life, playing an important, but minor role, overshadowed by angsty journal entries and the like. But they are more important than many things. I don't remember, but my mom tells a story about how my twin sister and I, as toddlers, decided to climb the book shelves that we grew up with. My sister was certainly the instigator and I the follower, as she was much more daring, even in diapers. I did follow her, though, and thankfully, those shelves didn't tip over on us. I can only imagine how awesome it would feel to someone two or three feet tall to reach the top of a tall bookcase. I don't think we made it that far, though. Those book shelves loomed over all of childhood, full of interesting items from sometime in our parents' history--sea shells and framed photos of them smiling, which was fairly rare in real life. The books were almost an afterthought to me most of the time. Children's encyclopedias did not entertain me one bit, but Johnny Mathis Christmas records did.
Later on, reading was a safety net for me when I became an awkward adolescent who hid out in my room all the time. A Cynthia Voigt book entitled A Solitary Blue kept me company, along with the full gamut of Goosebumps and Fear Street, but I didn't venture much further than that into the world of books. The most important item on my Scholastic order form was always the cheesy animal poster. In middle school, I volunteered a few times in the library, and I enjoyed the solitude between the shelves. That was probably the first spark that would later lead me to become a librarian. At that point, my books were stored in piles on the floor, and they stayed that way for a long time, no book shelves needed.
I didn't rediscover the library again until college when I needed a place of refuge between classes. Again, the shelves and the comfy chairs were a beacon from the loud world outside. I spent hours studying, socializing, and fantasizing about the future, nestled among those shelves. At the same time, I volunteered in the local children's library and realized how much amazing information was available in children's nonfiction. I wished I had spent those childhood days in between shelves instead of staring at the Rosy O'Donnell show, but there isn't any undoing that decision! I'll just have to deal with knowing more about cutie-patooties than architecture or archeology.
As a result of this college romance with the shelves, tangential though it may have been, I wound up going to library school and spending a few years working as a teen-services librarian. There, shelves meant politics almost as much as they meant opportunity in that each department had to fight for shelf space in the library, and the entire library district had to fight to convince people that those shelves were still meaningful to the community. Before long, I decided that I wasn't passionate enough about arguing that point, so I went about my merry way, and now I am just grappling with how shelves will factor into the future. This new one is a nice addition, though, and I welcome it to tap me on the shoulder and remind me that it matters.
