Of Books and Dilemmas

I can’t decide whether it’s a good thing or a pathetic thing when one has to move in order to accommodate one’s library. That is, however, precisely the dilemma that Susan and I are facing. And the decision that we ultimately made is not to get rid of books but instead to get rid of the house.

Here’s the situation. We bought our existing home in 1995. It was never our dream house; it was very convenient, and it was what we could afford at the time. Most importantly, it was exactly halfway between Susan’s mother’s place and her grandmother’s place. Both had significant health issues, so accessibility was an important thing. Unfortunately, both women are no longer with us, so that means that the convenience factor has now been removed.

The present house is a five bedroom house with about 2500 square feet. It was built in 1968, and it shows. Aside from its early Brady Bunch decor (most of which has already been replaced, because we just couldn’t stand it), the use of space is not good–we have a formal living room that is 13×28 feet, meaning that it, alone, is 364 square feet, or 14% of the total square footage of the house. You could almost roller skate or bowl in that room, it’s so big. It’s also almost completely wasted space. In order to accommodate our library as it existed in 1995–Susan also collects books in areas that interest her (we have a massive collection of computer books and an even larger collection of vampire and ghost stories that’s all her stuff)–we took one of the bedrooms and had 24 linear feet of floor to ceiling bookcases built in. The entire library–all of it, hers and mine–fit in there then.

The problem is that both of us have added books exponentially since then. Her stuff gradually got squeezed out of there as my collection grew–I now own about 1500 Civil War books alone–and it had to go somewhere. Consequently, we now have at least one bookcase in every room in the house, except for the kitchen and the formal dining room (only because there simply is no room for one with the dining room furniture, or there would be). Those bookcases are now full, and because our basement is damp, we are completely out of room for additional books. There is just no shelf space left. New books–I bought two on Sunday–are now beginning to just pile up on the floor in my library because there simply is nowhere to put them.

This summer, a year after Susan’s mother died, we came to the inevitable conclusion that it was time to look into moving. We quickly realized that unless we built a home, we were going to have an extremely difficult time finding something that would reasonably accommodate the books. So, we set out to find a builder that had a workable floor plan that would also work with us to give us what we want/need. Fortunately, we found just that, and we’re about to break ground on a new house. The new house will have two offices–mine and Susan’s. Mine will have approximately 45 linear feet of 9-foot tall floor to ceiling bookcases, which will not only accommodate my collection but also leave room to grow. Susan’s office will have another 16 or so linear feet of floor to ceiling bookcases, which will accommodate her stuff. The builder says it’s six months from breaking ground to closing, so we’re looking at moving into the new place some time around July 4 or so. I can’t wait. I’ve never particularly liked our current house, and I am frankly tired of pouring money into a bottomless pit. At nearly 40 years old, stuff is dying or wearing out. In the last 18 months, we’ve put on a new roof, had both chimneys re-bricked, replaced the central air conditioning unit, and replaced the main sewer line, since the roots of the 40-foot-tall silver maple tree in the front yard smashed up the existing masonry pipeline. And there’s plenty more where that ugly little list came from…..

So, when push comes to shove, the simple truth is that we’re moving because we need more space for books. And I can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or a really pathetic thing.