Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I have too many books...

Is that even a thing? Having too many books? I've tried to rid myself of ones that I know I won't read anymore. College textbooks, things I've had for years and never really gotten into, books I don't think I'll read again...but somehow my apartment is FULL. I've been doomed from the start. My mom comes from a long line of teachers and my dad can spout baseball and American history facts like it's his job. (It's not, in case you were wondering.) While other kids got trips to the toy store, we got trips to Barnes and Noble on teacher discount day and we never left with less than three books. Road trips were a chance for my brother and I to zip through books and then trade with each other. Summer reading charts were laughable in our house. My mom would read us books while we were in the bathtub. Books and the Potatoes clan pretty much go hand-in-hand.With no cable in my apartment and some novel-centric grad school classes, things are getting pretty messy around here. It all started when I filled up my bookshelf upon moving to Madison.

Yes, one of those cubes has DVDs in it...but I had nowhere else to put them! Since moving in, I have cleaned out the shelves considerably in order to make room for new books. Now I can't seem to stop noticing them...

 ....At the kitchen table...


....in a random hodge-podge of books and other papers in the bedroom...
....and, of course, in the bathroom. Don't get me wrong, I have always been a  bathroom reader. (I used to take an anthology of the United States presidents into the bathroom in second grade) When I moved into this apartment and saw that there was a SHELF above the toilet well...it wasn't long before that was put to good use.

So, with my impending move to France upon me and the soon-to-be-combined book collections of myself and Sean I'm wondering if I should invest in a Kindle or just buy some more bookshelves. Sean has been given strict orders (*ahem* requests) of "DO NOT PUT MY BOOKS ANYWHERE WHILE I'M GONE" that he seems to be willing to comply with. I guess the real question is, can I go three months in a foreign country without needing an entire suitcase dedicated to books?

I suppose I can just buy an extra suitcase while I'm there to bring them back...

2 comments:

jennyp said...

yep- we love to read in our house! Maybe the Kindle will come your way before your trip to France once you get your placment. I love that you remember that I read to you guys in the bathtub!

srobbins said...

We also go to B&N as many as three times in a week, especially when we've got brand new gift cards from Christmas burning holes in our pockets. But let's be honest -- if you can't leave the books around your home as a trophy of reading something and maybe also actually finishing it, what's the point?