Not that it means anything
It's Saturday. Not that that means anything to me. It could be a Tuesday for all I care. For all my worries, it has been nice to have burdens taken off my days. No this meeting today, no this dead-line to meet tomorrow, to make ready for something in the near future--or farther. In a way it makes up for all the vacations I've never taken over the years. So, Happy SMTWThFSat! Enjoy!
I keep talking about packing books. That's because it's taking me a long time. Not the packing itself. That's a breeze. I've at least learned to do that task fairly well in my past 34 years in the book business. Probably the best way to explain it, bowing to the modern age, is that my library has become fragmented, and defragging takes a long time. I had no idea (well, a clue), that this Muriel Spark is over there, and this one is here, and there's another over there somewhere. And then I get amazed at my accumulation. The winnowing has had a silver lining in that it has helped to boil my true self down to its essence(s). My Tchaikovsky books and scores filled one large box--I didn't think to count them, I should have. My Emily D. books are packed--again, I didn't count them. Should have. Those two are obvious accumulations. But then I have been discovering I'm very rich in many authors and subjects, not just the aforementioned Muriel. I have dozens of Auden books; dozens of books on King Arthur; dozens of books on T.S. Eliot (we'll discuss him another time, I've changed); dozens of Anne Tyler; dozens of Fay Weldon; a goodly stack of Gide, much more than I thought of Poe (strange.), another interesting stack of Joyce Carol Oates; among others. I was also amazed at how much Maugham and Gore Vidal I have. No need to turn this into a poetic catalog. You can see what I mean.
I have 16 books on Alexander the Great (he doesn't get packed for personal reasons), and two others at this point; those will go with me. The additional two are The Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden, and The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I hope I can keep it down to these eighteen. Emily's complete in one book, but there are three large volumes of Auden's poems, so I opted for the Selected instead. Things are almost sorted.
I did run across a paperback of Plutarch's Essays. I have no doubt that this translation by Robin Waterfield, which I have read, is probably the better one, it's more readable and complete. But as I generally just go to my favorite essay, "On Peace of Mind," and I like the intricate smoky-pipe flavor of the Loomis, and as I have posted the latter (see my Links), both translations get packed.
Now do you understand why it's taking me so long?
I keep talking about packing books. That's because it's taking me a long time. Not the packing itself. That's a breeze. I've at least learned to do that task fairly well in my past 34 years in the book business. Probably the best way to explain it, bowing to the modern age, is that my library has become fragmented, and defragging takes a long time. I had no idea (well, a clue), that this Muriel Spark is over there, and this one is here, and there's another over there somewhere. And then I get amazed at my accumulation. The winnowing has had a silver lining in that it has helped to boil my true self down to its essence(s). My Tchaikovsky books and scores filled one large box--I didn't think to count them, I should have. My Emily D. books are packed--again, I didn't count them. Should have. Those two are obvious accumulations. But then I have been discovering I'm very rich in many authors and subjects, not just the aforementioned Muriel. I have dozens of Auden books; dozens of books on King Arthur; dozens of books on T.S. Eliot (we'll discuss him another time, I've changed); dozens of Anne Tyler; dozens of Fay Weldon; a goodly stack of Gide, much more than I thought of Poe (strange.), another interesting stack of Joyce Carol Oates; among others. I was also amazed at how much Maugham and Gore Vidal I have. No need to turn this into a poetic catalog. You can see what I mean.
I have 16 books on Alexander the Great (he doesn't get packed for personal reasons), and two others at this point; those will go with me. The additional two are The Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden, and The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I hope I can keep it down to these eighteen. Emily's complete in one book, but there are three large volumes of Auden's poems, so I opted for the Selected instead. Things are almost sorted.
I did run across a paperback of Plutarch's Essays. I have no doubt that this translation by Robin Waterfield, which I have read, is probably the better one, it's more readable and complete. But as I generally just go to my favorite essay, "On Peace of Mind," and I like the intricate smoky-pipe flavor of the Loomis, and as I have posted the latter (see my Links), both translations get packed.
Now do you understand why it's taking me so long?
posted by DMP at 3:40 PM
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