Oddities and Rareties

The only way we're going to get through cataloguing rareties and oddities tonight is with a little help from Belgium. Luckily, Belgium is always willing to help.Honestly, I didn't realize what I'd signed on for when we decided to do this book sale. We've done little hundred-book sales before, but we've never literally inventoried and gone through every book we own. Since Friday night, all I've done, really, is look at books. It's been physically and mentally exhausting, but it's also made me realize what a book-centric life we lead. There were literally stacks that represented strata of life experience and strata of obsession. The stacks of books on opera when I thought I was going to write a fake biography of the composer Voss Bender. The insane number of books on fungi and mushrooms, some of them testimonials to the eccentricity of others. The way I seem to have mined out every book on Byzantium ever written. In the grip of these infatuations, I don't think I realized just how crazy it was...until now, going through all of these books.And then there are all of the personal memories of these books, where bought and on what trips. Sometimes the most treasured books are the dog-eared, ragged ones. Sometimes it's a remaindered art criticism book that sparked "Martin Lake."Anyway, this has been much more of a trip and a task than we thought, and we probably won't have the advance lists out to those who asked for them until tomorrow afternoon. But we must be done by then--I have so many other deadlines.I stand in the middle of the house now and we've destroyed it to save it, basically. Eruptions of piles of books everywhere, scattered, stacked, set out side-by-side. It seems like, while doing all of this, as if we have given over our entire lives to books and nothing else.So, tonight, rareties and oddities. Tomorrow, mopping up. No more posting until I'm done.And in the meantime--just got this in the mail for review, which, even though I'm not a big Star Wars fan, is pretty fun. Note the light saber that lights up. Not supposed to be officially reviewed until October, so I'll wait until then to comment more on this, which, in an odd way, strikes me as just as insane a project as some of the stuff we're cataloguing. Even the pop-ups have pop-ups.Jeff