Project library

My main project for Lockdown 3 was to overhaul my library.

This proved both rewarding and challenging. I located books I never knew I had and a few I never wanted.

I found some old favourites – like a beaten up paperback of Keith Waterhouse’s Our Song, a humorous bittersweet account of his relationship with his mistress – and Max Beerbohm’s Seven Men and Two Others alas not illustrated by him.

There were problems to overcome.

The first was space.

I had more books than room on my three bookshelves so the answer was to purchase two new bookcases.

There were two types: flat pack and ready-assembled designer ones at roughly ten times the cost of the former.

I chose the flat pack which arrived a few days later.

The instructions were incomprehensible so I sent for my handyman.

He told me that the wood was chipboard made out of wood shavings and easily processed into a flat pack.

The second problem was classification.

I decided to categorise by genre: fiction, reference books, travel and biography but this became difficult as only one bookcase could accommodate sizable volumes.

At the end, looking at bookcases neatly containing my books, I felt as the writer Antony Powell did when he gave the title Books do furnish the room to one of his novels in Dance to the Music of Time.

In an age of electronic reading I wondered too if sadly the library was a relic of the past.