Thursday, May 17, 2018

Silent Night

Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub
2002
Weight: 6.4 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

This was an interesting and unbelievable story from World War I that I've heard about a handful of times, but I never really understood. This book definitely cleared up any questions I had, but I did feel like there came a point where I wondered when the book would end and how it was possible the author had so much to say about one single day. It might have been a better magazine article--at least for me as a reader--though I appreciated all the research and hard work the author put into it. I loved the pictures, cartoons, and first-hand accounts.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Larousse Pocket French/English English/French Dictionary

Barron's: French at a Glance

Barron's: French Verbs

Langenscheidts Universal-Worterbuch: Englisch

Larousse Pocket French/English English/French Dictionary 1999

Living Language: German Coursebook 2005

Living Language: German Coursebook 1998
Living Language: German Learner's Dictionary 1993
Pronounce it Perfectly in French 2005

Weight: 2.8 oz

Method of Disposal: Donating

Along with all of the other things I am giving up with this move is the ridiculous notion that I will ever learn any of the foreign languages I collected all sorts of books to learn. German, French, Russian. I think there is even an Italian. I should have been smart enough to try Spanish, but everyone kept telling me to so I had absolutely zero desire until it was too late. Not that 13 years of French got my anywhere in being able to speak French and that is the truth! I am not ready to give up on learning ASL though...

Among the Rubble of Fallen Bookshelves...

I have collected books for as long as I can remember. I worked in bookstores for years before I ended up at the animal shelter. I have gathered words, sentences, punctuation, and cover art to my own detriment. I purchased books before clothes, sometimes instead of food. I can see my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood sprawled across many shelves and shoved into boxes that sit collecting dust, just waiting for the next big move. I think I am a woman who is afraid of commitment, settling, and stagnation. Yet the things I love most seem to coincide best with a stable, secure, immovable life. I love dogs, books, and often one woman’s company above that of others. The dogs are here for the long haul. They are too wonderful for this world and yet they are essential to it. The woman is complicated. The books are sturdy, durable, constant, perfect, and full of intrigue. They are also very heavy. They are boxes of ounces, pounds, kilograms, weight. We have moved together too many times. Maybe we met at the wrong time in the wrong place, and I have just refused to let go all of this time. I have decided to dismantle this library of thousands of books. What am I holding onto really? I have books I loved, books I hated, books that made me uneasy for weeks, and books that made someone else uneasy for weeks. I have begun to treat these books like objects and not like the magical capsules they are. I am going to give away, sell, donate all of this weight so that others can enjoy it, collect it, share it, and so that I can move more freely through my life. Libraries are where it’s at. The problem: I am terrified to let the books go. We have been together so long and put each other through so much. The only way I can imagine sending them off is if I memorialize each and every one I have left at this moment. This blog is to honor my friends, my enemies, my lovers, my life, and my words as I have collected them through the books I have read and, finally, to move away from them and onto other things. I will never stop loving books. I will never stop reading. I plan only to stop collecting so much material, so much weight.

The Dismantled Library