On Books

A selection of books looking for a bookshelf

After much grimacing, I realized today that I was going to have to get into the boxes in the garage and excavate some books. Now before I go any further I should state for the record that Matt and I are huge bibliophiles. Also, that our rather large book collection requires many, many bookshelves which we are having a devil of a time finding locations for in the new house. Ironically the new place is about the same size as the old place where we had plenty of room for all the books. I don’t understand why but the new house seems just the wrong shape to have enough spots for all our bookcases.

When we first moved in we got out the “critical” book sections and found homes for those. These included my art studio reference, business, fiction, poetry, horses, and some children’s books. The manga (except for two rather sad and dog-eared copies of Immortal Rain) are all in boxes in our bedroom closet. The cookbooks are in boxes in the Family Room waiting for a bookshelf to be painted Plum. The new age books are in the bedroom, I think…

Meanwhile History, Fantasy/Science Fiction, Fine Art, Children’s, and Massage are still waiting to find homes. In utter frustration I have told Matt that we’re going to have to finish the basement in order to create a proper library!

In the meantime, I needed to have some illustrators near to hand to study. So up came Arthur Rackham, Winsor McCay, NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Beatrix Potter, Brian Froud, Charles Vess, Michael Kaluta, James Gurney, Mac Raboy, and a variety of Japanese manga and game artists. (I have still not been able to locate Leyendecker... *grump*)

I feel better now…I truly do. Now, if I could only figure out where to put them!