Happy New Year, everyone!
While ringing in the New Year with friends last week, the discussion inevitably turned to this year’s resolutions. The Holiday season had been so busy for me that I hadn’t had time to really think about it. I wasn’t able to contribute to the conversation, though the most entertaining I heard was from my best friend. She put down her glass, squared her shoulders and declared, “My resolution is for better posture. For the fifth year in a row”. As I was puttering around my apartment this morning waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, it occurred to me that I have two resolutions. I may actually accomplish them, too.
The first is to buy another book case. I buy books on a regular basis, sometimes more frequently than I buy groceries. I purchased a bookshelf in July and it’s come to the point where I’m stacking books on the floor along the walls, again. And being in grad school means that I’m obligated to buy lots of text books every 6 months or so. Some of these are never read, let alone opened, but they do provide for the occasionally fantastic title. Some of my favorites are “The Tao of Computing”, “Everything is Miscellaneous” and “A Short History of the Printed Word”, which is anything but short. Titles like this deserve space on a shelf, not my floor. The second resolution is to put some order to my books. I mentioned that I’m in school again, but what I didn’t say is that I’m studying to be a librarian. In another year or so I will be a librarian, and there is absolutely no order to my books. Its unseemly. The fiction and non fiction live together, mixed in with anthologies and style guides. It bothers me enough that I try not to look too closely at the shelves.
Many of us make New Years resolutions with the best of intentions of carrying them through, but occasionally they are lost or purposefully set aside. In times of change many of us find ease in old habits that die hard. After all, after a long or particularly hard day, what is more comforting than your own cluttered bookshelf, filled with the dog eared pages of books that wrapped you in their stories and carried you away?
Stephanie
