You might think my office was a very poorly organized library if you were to stop by my house right now. You’d be right about the sad state of my organizational skills. The festive piles of books surrounding me includes my textbooks for this quarter’s class at Northern Seminary and the crazy rotating cast of characters I’ve been borrowing by the pound (for this project) from actual libraries that keep their books on shelves organized by Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress numbering systems. I also have a Leaning Tower of books I’ve already read, and about which I need to decide if I’m going to keep them or pass them on. I also have books I keep handy for reference.
My husband’s office has boxes of books in them, never unpacked from our move here 2-1/2 years ago. We knew our housing would would be temporary-ish, so we left the books in their cardboard containers. If one of us needs one, we dig and rummage through the boxes, which are labeled with general categories. What I’ve learned from the results of those well-intentioned labeling and book sorting efforts is that I should not ever work in a library. (I’ve crossed accounting and brain surgery off my “possible careers” list, too.)
Those piles of books, along with my husband’s various piles of books in progress, which at present includes this book with an especially memorable title, don’t bother me so much. They’re like a really haphazard tool collection. We’re using those tools in one form or another. Even the ones in their cardboard warehouses.
I have one little pile of books haunting me right now, in the same way a bunch of brand-new tools still wrapped in their laceration-causing clamshell packaging might drive a carpenter nutty…
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/pilgrimsroadtrip/2015/01/i-dont-live-in-a-library/#ixzz3QhyPAGuA
