Sunday, November 9, 2014

Sorted by Size

The New Shelves

New bookshelves arrived Saturday (above) to complete a corner of bookshelves that began earlier this year with a family donation of bookshelves (below). The new pieces are two tall units side by side, each with nine shelves, the top three being eight inches, the next two nine inches, the next two ten inches, and the bottom two measuring twelve inches each. For an experiment with the new shelves, I sorted all the books by size (except for the very large ones, which stayed on the other, original, deeper shelves) and placed them on whichever of the new shelves they fit best, and that way I could observe how the collection distributed itself in these new conditions after the careful but relentless expansion of the past six months.

The Old Shelves


The Shroud

Than I also fixed up a curtain to cover the books (or a shroud, as some people call these covers) to put in place during the frequent times when the sun is distributing its destructive and ambient light all over the place and yet no one is around to look at the books. Covered up when not in use, the spines perhaps will fade and crack and generally fall apart somewhat less rapidly.