Shelving My Library

OK, despite it being Sunday and even given that I've constructed the usual Sunday roast dinner which would normally precipitate a 'Lazy Sunday Food Post™', I've decided instead that I would share instead a fragment of the progress in my reorganisation of the chaotic clutter that is my material existence. I have been busily constructing shelving and re-jigging my library of books, files and vinyl records, some of which are pictured above; in an attempt to keep up with my ever-increasing consumption of such stuff. I've decided that my vinyl collection will stay pretty much static in its present state from now on; but books, I can't resist adding to my collection weekly [daily?]. It's a thing, but there you are. What is visible here is but a portion of the household library, most of which is randomly spread throughout the house and the cottage next door.

I've mentioned it before, but the importance of the presence of books in my life was given to me by the fact that I grew up in a working class home that unusually actually had books - not many, I'll admit, until I started accumulating them for myself - but significantly more than I'd seen in other people's houses at the time. Having been encouraged from an early age to use our local public library weekly, and on entering secondary school having been given free access to a great school library, further reinforced my appetite for books and reading. That I have read many of the books I own, but not read probably the greater part of my library - which I consider it to be - is neither moss nor sand: I have through its pages access to a large collection of knowledge that will remain unmediated, unfettered and un-curated by the online world, and it requires no electricity or network connectivity to make it work. It's worth meditating on that small fact for a while, methinks...