2004-01-24 - 1:57 p.m.
When I moved into this apartment in September, I swore I would unpack everything within a few days, while the fit of relocation ambition was still well underway, and not just carry sealed boxes of goods with me from home to home. I did not do this, however -- many of the boxes still sit in the dining-area-cum-storage-room, over which they enjoy unchallenged dominion since I do not actually own a dining table.One of the consequences of the fact that the fit of relocation ambition was quickly diffused by laziness was the fact that until a few days ago my books were still sitting horizontally in stacks on the bookshelf, awaiting sorting through, and as a result it was virtually impossible to locate a specific book. I decided to remedy this and put them all vertically in neat rows, like you may have seen before in your local library. I thought this was the best arrangement. It's working for me so far.
I discovered something while going through these books: I have numerous books I have borrowed from people very long ago, which are now no longer borrowed but in fact basically stolen. My charge of certain of these books has in some cases long outlived my relationships with their original owners. It would, I imagine, be somewhat ridiculous of me to hunt them down now to return the books -- and besides, if they miss these volumes at all they've surely by now replaced them. So I suppose they're mine.
The best part? In a number of these cases I have never read the books! Some of these were what I will call "educational loans" -- books lent not because the borrower asked for them but because the lender felt the borrower ought to read them. If I recall correctly, one of these novels was loaned to me ten years ago, and I still have not read even one page of it. I could have read two sentences a day since the day it was loaned to me and still finished it by now.
I am not a delinquent borrower as a general rule -- I borrow, I read/listen/watch/etc., I return. But this is also typically when I have solicited the loan. When it has been an "educational" for-Craig's-own-good, you-should-really-check-out-this-L-Ron-Hubbard-guy type of unsolicited loan, I have in many cases been unknowingly acquiring a new possession. How ironic that I come to own the things I am least likely to have asked for.
Further irony: the Great Book Organizin' of January 2004 began as a search for a specific book I own, the positively wonderful A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which I purchased myself, and which I cannot find. I believe I might have loaned it out and it's now some other person's stolen property. If you are reading this, know me, and have my copy of Toole, could you please let me know? For it I will gladly swap a handful of other people's crap paperbacks which have too long clung like burrs to my book collection.
