i rearrange my room to make space for a new bookcase; before it even arrives, the books have taken over. they stand front and center, the first thing seen when entering the room, lined with careful haphazard grace in the single bookcase already in my room. it is merely two shelves, reaches hardly to my hip, but i add another two rows of books, one atop the case and one on the windowsill it sits beneath. they are largely my more recent aquisitions, with most my extensive adolescent collection of mercedes lackey novels still in a basket in the living room. also in the living room is another two shelves' worth, while the first bookcase i ever filled sits, still full but largely neglected, in my sister's room. i have five books in my car, including my spanish/english dictionary.

i feel that while my music collection is rather self-consioucly eclectic (i don't really have to put placido next to marilyn, but i like to), my literature is sincerely so. marquez and atwood and vonnegut and robbins, nabokov and aristophanes, dillard and angelou and cummings and borges and kingsolver. i truly and earnestly love them all. the new york public library's science desk reference sits next to mediations from a conversation with god and the oddesy; a collection of very adult stories from roald dahl lives in between the botany of desire and my organic gardening guide. i'm proud of it, my library, proud of my books. i'm still not quite sure where the new bookcase will fit.