wyntarvox

Even though the new bookshelves are upstairs and I spend most of my time downstairs, it does make me happy to have all of my books out of boxes again. It might even be a good thing that I'm not among them constantly, so that they don't become ignored in the background of daily life, but give me a fresh thrill of pleasure every time I see them.

As long as I can remember, I've loved to read and re-read, and collected as many books and magazines as I could. (Music too, but listening to music is a less tangible experience.) I spent a lot of my twenties and thirties trying to recall and track down books that I loved as a kid, but never owned. I still enjoy reading books that are intended for young people.

When I started college 32 years ago, the internet began to take up most of that book-shaped space in my free time, and although I never stopped buying books, I gradually stopped reading them as often. I started up again once my kids were born, but I've never caught up. Now I can only hope that I live long enough to read at least most of the ones I own, but new books come out every week that distract me from my backlog.

Thirty years is a long time, and I know there are some books that I own that I probably wouldn't enjoy reading now, or would have to read in the context of when they were written. But it's hard to know which ones will disappoint me just from glancing at the covers. I want to give them all a chance!

Then there's the family to consider. A lot of the books that I own and haven't read are ones that Robby has, like the Wheel of Time series. The kids have their own separate collections. I don't know if they'll ever be that interested in reading most of my books, although they have enjoyed some of my favorites, like Hitchhiker's Guide, Wrinkle in Time, and Watership Down. Will's favorite book of all time is the Westing Game, and Connor adores Howl's Moving Castle. But they also have a ton of Wimpy Kid, Minecraft, et al that were marketed to them as they were growing up, and I doubt whether they'll want to hang onto those indefinitely.

My mom has a huge book collection as well (this is one way you can tell we are related) but unlike me, she has already read almost every book she owns. She keeps bringing me new ones and then I feel bad for not getting around to reading them.

I don't know if I have a point to make here, I think I'm just trying to talk myself into being okay with having so many books. I hope that I will be able to read most of them eventually.

One day last May, apropos of nothing in particular, our DM happened to mention to me in chat that at some point he had prepared a one-shot storyline based on the movie Hackers. My response to that was: "Ok well now I know what I want for my birthday."

So today it came to pass that our intrepid group of adventurers teamed up with a band of rogues who bore more than a passing resemblance to the heroes of that movie, and mayhem ensued. It was great!

On top of that, the baker in our party made a birthday cake that looked like the head of Wally the Red Sox mascot. She's fantastically talented and I was blown away. Unbeknownst to me, Robby had bought a small pack of those plastic ball caps that they use for ice cream in order to use one as a cake topper, but they also happened to be the perfect size to fit on the head of my crocheted steel defender, so now he has yet another hat (I also have made him at various points over the past year-plus a sun hat, a pirate hat and a Santa hat).

It's all very silly and I can't stop smiling.

I tripped and fell into another library book sale and now my TBR list is up to almost 800. I took all of their Steven Brust and half of their Heinlein at 50 cents each.

Connor picked out a book by Haruki Murakami although he's still working his way through his last book sale purchase, One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as an online copy of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. I'm still bemused by his taste in reading material.