Here are three quick snapshots taken with my phone this morning: bookcases in my living room, my dining room, and my office; I didn't bother photographng the wall full in one of the guest rooms. But take my word for it...there is a fourth wall of books not shown.

And now I am getting ready to move. To a smaller house. One with fewer bookcases. Oh dear, oh dear.

You can see, in the office snapshot, that there are storage boxes already filled with "office stuff"...papers, etc.  But I have not yet begun on the books. I don't quite know where to start.

FInding recipients is not the problem. I have plenty of destinations for these books. The problem is selecting what goes, what stays.

Seventeen years ago I was asked by a local bookstore, the wonderful WORDSWORTH'S, now sadly gone, to write an article for their newsletter. I had just moved at the time, and that move was to a LARGER house, not a smaller one. In fact it was to this very house. I wrote about arranging my books, something I did that year in an orderly fashion, as if I were a librarian.  For the first time in what had been a rather scattered and disorderly life, I had put all the biographies, memoirs, collected letters into the same shelves...and more than that: alphabetically. They are still there; those are the dining room bookcases. Fiction and non-fiction...also alphabetical...went into the living room.  Poetry is in the office, along with my own books, and reference books, plus a lot of quirky volumes that are hard to categorize.

The article I wrote then was mildly humorous, including categories like "Books I will never ever read again," "Books I regret buying," and "Books with strange stains on them". 

(I htink all of those categories can now go into the DISCARD pile.)

But oh, there are so many that I love, and treasure.