The unpacking of the Sarvas Library continues, slowly but pleasingly. As expected, there are many detours, and I've actually even refilled a few holes I've noticed. For example, my copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had mysteriously vanished, although the rest of the trilogy remained. So that's been replaced. And my copy of Charles D'Ambrosio's superb Dead Fish Museum existed only as a bound manuscript, so I decided to upgrade that to an actual finished copy.
Along the way, though, I encountered a problem that I haven't yet sorted out to my satisfaction. I'm presently unpacking fiction only. Typically, I've kept my collection of writers' letters - another obsession of mine - in a separate section, which has always worked reasonably well. Now, I'm sort of wondering what to do about writers' biographies. I don't have nearly as many of those, but I've accumulated a few since the last time the library was on shelves. So I'm left wondering do I store my copy of Frederick Brown's Flaubert biography with the rest of my Flaubert, or do I separate the biographies as well.
(I don't know why this photo is oriented this way, having technical issues this morning.)
This might sound like a trivial question, and in the grand scheme it is. But I've just added two more bookcases, and it's clear I won't have the shelf space for everything I own. And as you can see from the picture above, the biography - like most biographies - takes up a healthy amount of shelf space. So what to do? For the moment, I'm placing the bios with the fiction, but as shelf space disappears, I might revisit.
I also notice that Alexandre Dumas wrote some truly fat books - yes, he was writing serials, paid by the word - and the 11 volumes of his I own eat up nearly an entire shelf. Will I ever re-read The Vicomte de Bragelonne, I wonder? Still, for now it remains.
Other than recommending a mental health care visit, any suggestions?