BOOKS BREED ON THEIR SHELVES

I sometimes think books breed! but of course the reason I have so many is that I can't pass a charity shop without popping to see what gems might be sitting on their shelves, and one day Amazon just might bankrupt me! A good thing about no longer being in full time employment is that there is more time to read, however there is more time to do everything and of course this competition means that many things I fondly imagined I would do a lot more of, work against each other. I do a lot of biking, bird-watching and walking now, but I don't take books with me (they are too precious), so that cuts down on available reading time. Anyway I have bought two additional bookcases from Argos and spent this morning battling the complexities of flat-pack assembly. Very pleased with the results, the cases are quite cheap and cheerful and in Argos's current sale cost about £25 each including delivery, which is very good value indeed. Now I can get on with the exciting task of filling them up. I have quite an overspill in my "study" and am looking forward to sorting them out properly, fiction by alpha etc. I can see what the author Penelope Lively means in the following quote from her novel: Making it up: -

"The books win, always they win by their sheer numbers, by their dogged diversity. He sometimes sees them as a kind of chronic invasion-a culture that blooms where it can, and grimly proliferates when it gets a hold. The books always have the upper hand; silent, ineradicable". Too true Penelope too true.

Thanks to LibraryThing I can now look up my own book stats with ease, here they are: My catalogued library now consists of 1420 titles (up from 1360 at the beginning of the year), so maybe it's me who's breeding the books. I wouldn't want to be without them. The new shelves have been sited in one of our bedrooms they fit in quite nicely and I now have a chest of drawers which I will try to sell - bringing my costs down even further, a Scot to the end eh?