Piles and piles everywhere

Image from tumblr.com - I have a feeling that my middle room
would have looked like this eventually.

The to-read piles were growing by leaps and bounds.  Instead of shelving them, I was putting stacks of books on top of my shelved books, weighing down the top two shelves of the open bookcase.  There were also stacks on the floor, on my Aunt Mary chair, and all over the living room.  It was out of control.

But first, let me back-track.  Chris and I have stopped calling the middle room "the library" or "the reading room," as it will eventually be neither.  The basement will become a library-slash-family room, and the plan is floor-to-ceiling bookcases along one wall to house all of our books and other media.  In the meantime, we are attempting to ready the middle room for potential guests and a future nursery for children who have not yet been conceived.

And so it happens that we were in the room one night last week, attempting to clear out the clutter that had inevitably built up over the last year as we threw things in there that we could "find a home for later."  Later never quite came, did it?  Of course not.  But finally boxes were cleared out, piles of books were thrown haphazardly on shelves, and there was eventually an empty space in the middle of the floor in which people could walk, sit, stand, what have you.

Only one problem remained: my books had been put on shelves.  There were no piles anymore.  The open bookcase was no longer leaning forward, shelves buckling under the weight of simply too many pages.  How would I know what I was supposed to read next?  So I created a pile.

Yes, one last pile.  A pile of to-read books, and I would be stuck with that pile until it is finished.  And when that pile is gone and the books have been shelved or given away, I will create a new pile.  And maybe in the next ten years I will finally be allowed to buy new books again, or take books out of the library, because I will be caught up on my to-read pile and will have read every book I own.

Wishful thinking, I'm sure.  But it's the thought that counts.