When the sun is shining

Another glorious day albeit with scattered cloud: perfect for swimming and lazing and reading.

All of which seem like better alternatives than getting down to the messy and barbaric work of going through my book collection. 

I make the fundamental mistake of looking into each of the books over which I intone, “Thus with a spot I damn it!” - misquoting as usual, but near enough to Julius Caesar to make it lugubriously pretentiously appropriate. 

Each time I actually read part of the condemned book I seem to find something in it that is worth saving.  One book, “The Oranging of America and other stories” by Max Apple was about to be consigned to oblivion when I opened it, read a paragraph and then read the whole book.  Vastly enjoyable a series of eerily perceptive satires on American life with moments of real humour and some pathos.  And to think that I was about to get rid of it!  What other crimes are waiting to be perpetrated by my callous hands!

But I must be strong.  Some books are thick with dust (a slight exaggeration there) where they have stood un-consulted since they were placed on the shelf.  But that is not the point.  I might not look at a book for years and then suddenly need to find it.  And just knowing that it is there on the shelves, somewhere, is a comfort in itself.

 

But the somewhere is the problematic point.  Where is my “Stalky and Co” and “Froth on the Day Dream” and “Knots”?  I know that I have them all, but where the hell are they?  Sometimes finding a book like “The Oranging of America” is insufficient to make up for a chaotic collection.  So what I am doing now (or largely failing to do) is, in the long run going to add to the value of all my books by making their position in my collection more coherent.

As you can tell all of the above is merely a sort of displacement activity and a exhortation to myself to get a move on and do something irrevocable.

Perhaps not at this precise moment as I have to get ready to meet Irene and talk to her Proficiency student to gauge his level of competence ahead of his taking the oral examination – and then after he has been returned to his house a further exploration of the world of tapas in our local Ruta!

So tomorrow definitely something will be done.  But what about the visitors and the final preparations for their arrival!

Thank god for prevarication.  Probably.