Busman's library

Several years ago now, monshu and I looked into opportunities volunteering for Gerber-Hart Library. They were thrilled at the prospect of some workers who could help them catalogue their collection. But after filling out the paperwork, I had serious second thoughts: Cataloguing is what I do eight hours a day, five days a week, all year round. Why would I want to spend my weekends doing it, too?

That, I think, is why I never warmed to applications like LibraryThing. If I catalogued my books with it, I'd want to do it right, which would probably mean a lot of correcting and refining what other people have done rather than simply putting up with what was good enough. Besides, I've always been proud of the fact that my collection is modest and well-organised enough that locating a particular volume or perusing what I have on a given subject is almost always an easy task.

But, over time, I've been slowly losing the battle with disorder. My fifth column is my failing memory; it used to be enough for me to hear a name once or twice to fix it in my mind, but those days are long gone. Then there was the biresidential nature of my existence for many years, with one portion of my books (including both those I owned and those which I had access to thanks to the Old Man) residing chez monshu and another portion at my place. This time of transition has only exacerbated those problems, since it forced me to box up at least a third of my titles. So, even though I stop by the old homestead at least once a week, I can no longer take in all I have there with a glance.

This is how, over the past couple years, I've managed to end up with multiple copies of A bend in the river, My name is Red, The bridal wreath, and other books. So I understandably hesitated yesterday when confronted with a copy of Eudora Welty's Collected stories. I know that monshu and I had a conversation about "distaff Faulknerians" around this time last year and I know it resulted in the purchase of Flannery O'Connor's complete short stories and a Welty novel which I sent on to my sister. But was that all? I dimly recall buying some Welty for myself, but I don't remember what it was.

So the book is on hold for a week until I get back to 槐中室 to check inventory. If I recall (it's nearly a year since the Great Housecleaning), I tried as much as possible to pack up texts I'd already read and leave the new acquisitions on the shelves, but there's no guarantee of that. So if anyone's looking to add some some Welty to their LibraryThing, I may have something coming up for tender soon.