Moving House

So what I haven’t been talking about on the blog is that alongside all the work and the reading, we’ve also been in the process of buying a new house and selling our current one. It’s all been a bit stressful and not just because I’ve been trying to rationalise the books that are going with me. I can see the most stressful weeks in my reading – lots of romances and mysteries where a resolution is guaranteed and I don’t have to concentrate too hard.

By the time this publishes, we will have the keys to the new place and will be in the midst of trying to unpack the multitude of boxes and reassemble everything.  In the run up to the move I’ve done another rationalisation of the to-read bookshelf – that’s what the 50 pages and out rounds were about – and so my local charity shops have been the beneficiaries of a good stack of books.

And what have I learned through this?  Well firstly I need to think hard about saving books by my favourite authors.  Because my tastes change – and saving books doesn’t always work out for me.  A few of the books that got the boot were books by authors who I have previously loved and that now just didn’t grab me.  Some of them had been sitting on the shelves for a while, waiting for me to decide that I needed to treat myself to a good book.  If I’d read them at the time, I might have enjoyed them and now… not so much.

And I need to be better at knowing what I’m going to read.  There was a lot of literary fiction on that shelf that I’d picked up from the magic shelf at work because it sounded appealing – but that I’d never read because there was always something more amusing – or at the least lighter – to read. and so they just sit their on the shelves waiting for me to get around to it.  And it seems that that day probably isn’t going to happen – I’m going to continue to acquire more books – and books that I’d rather read ahead of the worthy literary fiction.  Why kid myself.

The good thing is that the new house has more space for bookshelves – but it’s also a chance for new resolutions – to be realistic about what I’m going to read and try not to hoard accordingly.  Wish me luck!