I buy from charity shops; I'm rarely a giver, a passer-on type book-reader. I keep 'em all. Not unless I really disliked a read. In which case, I'd bag it up & leave it on a bus, a train, a bench on the Meadows. One woman's doom is another woman's escapism. I had a dream of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Of sliding ladders and coffee tables and comfy chairs. Of my very own library space with books going back to childhood & the ones I'd managed to retain from then. The dream diminished about 7am this morning in the name of self-storage and Going Away. Hence this post is being written as a Holding Place to list all that I'm parting with (to Oxfam/friends over Amazon/eBay) so that one day when I'm less nomadic, I can rebuild and restructure again. Some of them I may well be happy with having read once, others I will want to own again & have in my possession. Frustratingly, some of them I've still not yet got round to* but this way I may yet still get there, one day. Although I feel to be parting with a lot, it's actually what I'm holding onto, what I don't want to Second Copy - aside my obvious favourites - which feels more telling: Drina Ballerina (the complete series), my C.19th US Writing & Culture texts, Riverside Chaucer... Here we are then. The Ones Which Got Away:
' .. But to Cecil, now that he was about to lose her, she seemed each moment more desirable. He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art. His brain recovered from the shock, and, in a burst of genuine devotion, he cried: 'But I love you, and I did think you loved me!' 'I did not,' she said. 'I thought I did at first. I am sorry, and ought to have refused you this last time, too.' (169, Penguin)
* Anna Karenina - read at intervals backstage throughout Act 1. * Hallam Foe. * Quick skip & a dance through both The Paris Wife & Fifty Shades of Grey(meh).
* War & Peace, resumed reading from July 2010.
Meanwhile, Munroe's comic strip the other day amused.
(Disclaimer: Closest I've got to Atlas Shrugged is Cloud Atlas or Greek myth.
