Buy Diane's Books   Sign Up for the Newsletter   Contact Diane   Follow Diane on Twitter Subscribe to the RSS Feed
Diane Whiteside, Inveterate Romantic

The Library Arrives

December 1, 2008 | Better than chocolate,Me, myself,Serendipity

Six months after moving into my new house, my library is finally unpacked – all sixty-plus boxes of it. (I stopped counting at sixty.) I’d given myself a year to finish the job, planning it around research for books. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized I’d be writing this particular manuscript right now, a tale which depends on one and only one reference book. And guess what? Yup, you’ve got it right: my aspiring anal-retentive self may have labeled all those boxes – but I hadn’t marked which one contained the unique reference book upon which this tale depended. So I needed to open box after box after box until I found it.

Well, I needed to find and enjoy my library again, right? My bookaholic self certainly thought so. My back disagreed but it was overruled.

Now I’m enjoying having all my treasures out in the open where I can see and touch them. All those dictionaries next to my desk, and my volumes of poetry just a few steps farther. My enormous Civil War atlas finally rejoices in a tall enough shelf, while Mount TBR has a bookcase to itself. Okay, it’s deliberately only a small bookcase but it is a dedicated one!

Some odd juxtapositions popped up along the way, too. Cats and baseball coexist on the same shelf. Okay, maybe that’s because the number of books on each subject worked out that way – or maybe cats and baseball players both scamper after balls? Perhaps. And Chaco Canyon, home of fascinating Native American ruins, lives right next to Washington’s spies, who in turn snuggles up to the Battle Cry of Freedom. My family took one look at that grouping and very firmly told me that I really needed to start writing more about pre-Civil War America! Harrumph!

As for fiction – well, at one point, Emma Holly was cozily sandwiched between Robert E. Howard’s Conan and E.M. Hull’s The Sheik. (Personally, I suspect she might have enjoyed their company.) If I find another auto-buy author starting with a ‘D’, I’m in serious trouble; that bookcase is already groaning. I’m barely coping with Kathleen Dante‘s career, since I grab everything she puts out.

Of course, there was the horrific moment when I realized a single one-foot-wide bookcase was expected to cope with four auto-buy authors: Emma Holly, Linda Howard, Angela Knight, and Mercedes Lackey. Ack! Peace was restored when Angela Knight and Mercedes Lackey moved to another bookcase. Hopefully, they can coexist with Elizabeth Lowell, since I buy everything she publishes on the first day it’s out. But if not, I’ve got a few spare shelves hidden away for expansion purposes… Life is good.

And if you’re wondering where that unique reference book was, which started the mad rush to unpack my entire library? Right where Murphy would have predicted it: the last stack, the bottom row, and the last box.

12:14 am  

Comments are closed.

Subscribe

Watch

Newsletter

Categories

  1. Better than chocolate
  2. Me, myself
  3. News
  4. Quirky notions
  5. Serendipity
  6. The stories
  7. Tuning the instrument
  8. Uncategorized

Archives

  1. April 2012
  2. March 2012
  3. February 2012
  4. January 2012
  5. November 2011
  6. October 2011
  7. September 2011
  8. August 2011
  9. July 2011
  10. June 2011
  11. May 2011
  12. April 2011
  13. March 2011
  14. February 2011
  15. January 2011
  16. December 2010
  17. November 2010
  18. October 2010
  19. September 2010
  20. August 2010
  21. July 2010
  22. June 2010
  23. May 2010
  24. April 2010
  25. March 2010
  26. February 2010
  27. January 2010
  28. November 2009
  29. September 2009
  30. April 2009
  31. March 2009
  32. February 2009
  33. January 2009
  34. December 2008
  35. November 2008
  36. September 2008
  37. August 2008
  38. July 2008
  39. June 2008
  40. April 2008
  41. March 2008
  42. February 2008
  43. January 2008
  44. December 2007
  45. November 2007
  46. October 2007
  47. September 2007

Meta

Copyright © 2007-2024 Diane Whiteside | Privacy Policy and Disclosures
Web Design and Hosting by Swank Web Design | Photography by Anastacia Campbell | Powered by WordPress