The Library of Amy

My friend Rachel (of middle school ice skating tomfoolery fame) was as into clothes and fashion as I was into books. I had lots of books and regularly lent them to her, and she occasionally lent me clothes (though I'll admit, I wasn't as into clothes as she was into books). And there is at least one book on my shelves that she has read and I have not. In fact, we referred to our respective collections as Rachel's Boutique and The Library of Amy.

This morning I saw there was a new post up on Lois Lowry's blog, which I follow. Since she lives in my neck of the woods, she speaks here often and even spoke on my birthday a few years ago, which I dragged my sister to. Today's blog topic was about how she is downsizing her possessions in preparation for moving. While reflecting on moving into her house many years ago, she says that she unpacked her books "in an orderly fashion, as if I were a librarian."

It made me think about my own current personal library. The Library of Amy has had about 95% turnover since I was a kid (I have kept my E.B. White box set, The Giver, Tuck Everlasting, and a few others, if you were curious) and has been repeatedly downsized with every move (last count was nearly 30 moves over the past 12 years). There was exactly one attempt to organize my shelves in some logical way that other people would understand, because they lived in a common space in a former apartment. The effort involved putting all the fiction together, alphabetically by author, then kids' books, and then nonfiction. It was tedious and didn't make me feel like I could find things any more accurately. For example, I know that Cervantes wrote Don Quijote, but that doesn't mean I associate his story with Robert Cormier or Malcolm Cowley. I do associate DQ with War and Peace and Brothers Karamazov, as Big Impressive Books I Have Read.

So in all other unpackings, I have made very little attempt to organize my books at all. The only thing that guides me in any way is my gut. I know I put The Giver next to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Ender's Game, because although one is a kids' book, one is fiction, and one is science fiction, they are among my top favorite books. They also live in my room, close to me, as with all other important things. On the upstairs hallway bookcases (built in!), I stuck all my books from undergrad together, fiction and non, and my grad school books are sequestered together too. But mostly they are all jumbled together on the shelves, several of which would really benefit from a bookend. But if working with books has taught me nothing else, it's that books are not built to last, even hardcovers. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the reverence that my friends have for books, and wish that all library users treated them better, but I do not expect mine to stand the test of time.

Probably there are lots of librarians and would-be librarians who get great satisfaction from organizing their books. I am not one of them. Does this mean I'll be a bad librarian? I hope not. I hope it just means that I will not be the kind with my hair in a bun, shushing kids and yelling at toddlers for pulling DVDs off the shelves willy-nilly (though don't get me wrong, that is annoying). I don't really see that as the future of librarianship anyway.

But still... don't tell my boss I don't organize my own books!