Books by the Bed
Last night I attacked the heap of books that had accumulated next to my bed. This is a task that happens every 4-6 months. I do it when I realize that I have now read most of what was there, so back to the bookshelves with the read stuff, and then I browse the shelves and put a couple of new items on the floor. Of course I sweep first. Eventually it will be a heap again.
Some books stay. I keep two historical atlases (one world history, one medieval history) next to the bed all the time. Wild Swans is still there because I've got about 2 1/2 chapters left. So is the stack of short stories that Amilynne gave out at Christmas (what a great gift). I'm only halfway through it. There's also a study by a professor in my mom's department about how current education trends have ruined one neighborhood school in Texas. (Teaching is scary business--no one, espeically if they're in power, trusts you to know how to do your job.)
Sometimes (like this time) I find a borrowed book. A copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Italian, which one of my professors loaned me and which I really must return before the class I'm taking from her ends this summer. (Incidentally, in Italian they have translated "muggles" as "Babbani." Strange word, so's the English one.)
I put my Billy Collins books (all of them) on the shelves, but that will be shortlived, as I have ordered others from Amazon and they will be here soon, so I'll need the old ones back out to compare them with.
I could honestly not buy a new book for a year and still have more than plenty of reading material here. But that won't happen. Book shopping is fun!
Anyway, that's the report. The floor is open now, waiting for a new heap to form.
Some books stay. I keep two historical atlases (one world history, one medieval history) next to the bed all the time. Wild Swans is still there because I've got about 2 1/2 chapters left. So is the stack of short stories that Amilynne gave out at Christmas (what a great gift). I'm only halfway through it. There's also a study by a professor in my mom's department about how current education trends have ruined one neighborhood school in Texas. (Teaching is scary business--no one, espeically if they're in power, trusts you to know how to do your job.)
Sometimes (like this time) I find a borrowed book. A copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Italian, which one of my professors loaned me and which I really must return before the class I'm taking from her ends this summer. (Incidentally, in Italian they have translated "muggles" as "Babbani." Strange word, so's the English one.)
I put my Billy Collins books (all of them) on the shelves, but that will be shortlived, as I have ordered others from Amazon and they will be here soon, so I'll need the old ones back out to compare them with.
I could honestly not buy a new book for a year and still have more than plenty of reading material here. But that won't happen. Book shopping is fun!
Anyway, that's the report. The floor is open now, waiting for a new heap to form.
posted by Melissa at 6:05 PM
3 Comments:
My bedside book-stack eventually became so bad I had to buy a seperate bookshelf for it. And it doesn't help that Barnes and Noble and Borders keep giving me Teacher Appreciation Days. My essentials that stay next to the bed no matter what: The Best American Non-Required Reading, the Norton Anthology of Criticism and Theory, my King Lear comic book, and, of course, the Oxford American Dictionary.
And yet when I call you to talk definitions, you claim you have to "find" your dictionary!
Yes, under the stack of all my other bedside books.
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