Long time no blog. Instead of reading and writing, I’ve been cataloguing my books, which was one New Year resolution I was determined to fulfil. It’s going well; four rooms finished, and only one and a half to go. It’s not exactly the Dewey system. All I’m trying to do is locate books because I’m so fed up of thinking I have a book, and then not knowing where to find it. Number Two Stepdaughter listed most of them by hand over a couple of summers, and I’ve been entering them in an Excel spreadsheet whenever the humour was on me. But this January I knuckled down, finished entering the titles, author, and location in the spreadsheet, and got myself some labels and protectors from an online library store.
What an intellectual wanker I was in my youth! I have stuff written by and about de Chardin, Castaneda, Marcus Aurelius, Cellini, Plato. I have tons of existential crap, nestling cheek by jowl with business how-to manuals, self-help tomes, and books of poetry. I have no memory of reading any of them, but that doesn’t mean anything, since I usually can’t remember books within weeks of finishing them. Which may be why I have duplicate and triplicate copies of several books. Would you believe SIX copies of Emma, three of Mansfield Park, two of Marketing Warfare?
In my defense, I do not have a single Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, or Jeffrey Archer. I may have been a wanker, but my taste was impeccable!