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"Are you moving back here, Adrian?"
May. 30th, 2004 06:25 pm"No, little girl. I'm not moving back into the house. I'm just helping your parents move things around, so the house won't be so cluttered, so they can find stuff more easily. Now that there's no bed in that upstairs room, there's room for your reading-to chair, and the bookcase with all your books -- I sorted out the baby books for your sister. I put the animal books together, and all the music books together, to help you find what you want to read. Do you want to go have a look?"
Sorting the grown-up books downstairs took much more time and energy. (We did that when the child was out of the house.) Even though we didn't really merge our libraries when we shared the house, so I took practically all my books with me when I moved out last year, this still felt uncomfortably like dividing a library when a relationship breaks up. They're planning to sell the house later in the year, to move to another neighborhood. (Decluttering will make the place look bigger and fetch a better price. That's the plan, at least.) They asked if I could take some of their old sf magazines and paperbacks off their hands. Well, sure. What are friends for?
It was an oddly twisted version of the book division of my divorce. That had been all strained courtesy, trying to trade my particular favorites for my ex's particular favorites. With this, I found myself urging them to keep my favorite titles, except where they had duplicates.
"You can have _Komarr_. Actually, you can have all these Bujold."
"What! Are you sure? I thought you liked Bujold. And I already have most of her stuff."
"Oh, yes. But I have the hardcovers upstairs."
My apologies to people who make their living from book sales. I spend most of my time reading library books, borrowed books, used books, books that have been loved to death. It's only at a time like this, when someone suddenly gives me nearly a cubic meter of fiction, that I have the luxury of considering which copy of a book I'd prefer to keep.
Even stranger, I found myself flinching from their decisions to keep books I thought were excessively icky. If I don't want it, why should I care where it goes? It's not like I'm in dire need for used bookstock to trade in for better reading material! But I have a nagging sense that friends shouldn't let friends read old Xanth or Pern novels. ("They're not really very good, but maybe I'll give them to my daughters in a few years," just makes me flinch harder.) My flinches are not necessarily anyone else's problem, of course.
Sorting the grown-up books downstairs took much more time and energy. (We did that when the child was out of the house.) Even though we didn't really merge our libraries when we shared the house, so I took practically all my books with me when I moved out last year, this still felt uncomfortably like dividing a library when a relationship breaks up. They're planning to sell the house later in the year, to move to another neighborhood. (Decluttering will make the place look bigger and fetch a better price. That's the plan, at least.) They asked if I could take some of their old sf magazines and paperbacks off their hands. Well, sure. What are friends for?
It was an oddly twisted version of the book division of my divorce. That had been all strained courtesy, trying to trade my particular favorites for my ex's particular favorites. With this, I found myself urging them to keep my favorite titles, except where they had duplicates.
"You can have _Komarr_. Actually, you can have all these Bujold."
"What! Are you sure? I thought you liked Bujold. And I already have most of her stuff."
"Oh, yes. But I have the hardcovers upstairs."
My apologies to people who make their living from book sales. I spend most of my time reading library books, borrowed books, used books, books that have been loved to death. It's only at a time like this, when someone suddenly gives me nearly a cubic meter of fiction, that I have the luxury of considering which copy of a book I'd prefer to keep.
Even stranger, I found myself flinching from their decisions to keep books I thought were excessively icky. If I don't want it, why should I care where it goes? It's not like I'm in dire need for used bookstock to trade in for better reading material! But I have a nagging sense that friends shouldn't let friends read old Xanth or Pern novels. ("They're not really very good, but maybe I'll give them to my daughters in a few years," just makes me flinch harder.) My flinches are not necessarily anyone else's problem, of course.
