An unfeasibly hot summer's day ended without thundery incident, though it was a close-run thing. I stared into the misty rain, savouring the midnight chill sweeping in on the air.
And with that before me, I closed the door, knowing a pile of some three to four hundred books, squatting to my left, would linger on a new bookcase come the next day.
*
Well, it is the next day. Up earlier than I cared for, not knowing the hour, not wishing to know, my stomach wrestled with an item I'd eaten in haste.
Returning to bed glad I hadn't vomited the problem free, I studiously avoided catching sight of any and all clocks. Fevered dreams of famous people haunted the
*
Pardon the interruption. Haunted the night. Then the alarm I'd set for 6.30 alarmed me. Luckily, the mechanical contrivance frightened no horses.
I was ready and waiting for a delivery of a new bookcase, one I knew I could just about squeeze in beside all the other cases, cabinets of curiosities, and caskets.
No bookcase came. I busied myself shifting books upstairs to a staging-post inside my library. The bookcase, destined for the other room, requires assembly-space in that other room.
Books begat books.
*
The morning weather is decidedly autumnal. Scottish summer weather generally is. While waiting for the bookcase, I was ambushed by the arrival of yet more books.
Why does a digital author, living and working in the digital age, buy hardbacks? Durability. I like reading them. Storing them is a puzzle, a challenge, and a danger.
At this rate, my autumnal purchasing of Folio Society books will fill the top layer of my bookcases in a decade. No, not the top shelves. Above that layer.
It's the mix of mass market paperbacks and assorted misfits of hardbacks, plaguing the living room floor and other staging-posts right now, that I must worry over.
Not for long. The interruption to this blog was caused by the arrival of a text message. That new bookcase was packed by gnomes, pixies, or leprechauns.
I take delivery from noon onwards.
*
Though I am not currently blogging weekly, I am, to my surprise, still blogging. And I had the time, away from arranging a business letter, away from shifting and stacking books, away from taking delivery of yet more tomes, to waffle in this blog.
Letter? Occasionally, e-mail won't cut it.
I know I won't write of an author's library again. For there'll be no more books, hell, no more bookcases.
And every time I think this, I know I'll write of an author's library again. That there'll be more books. It's hard to imagine more bookcases sneaking in, after today's behemoth lies installed. I've measured the stacks, and know that truth down to a decimal point.
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