{"id":84,"date":"2011-09-23T17:37:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T22:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.atomicnewstools.com\/pages\/?p=84"},"modified":"2012-01-28T21:16:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-29T03:16:49","slug":"unpacking-a-passel-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/unpacking-a-passel-of-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpacking A Passel Of Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So, it turns out I have two copies of \u201cThe Corrections,\u201d by Jonathan Franzen, a popular contemporary novelist who I\u2019m still trying to decide whether I like or not. I have no clue how I ended up with two copies but learned long ago not to spend too much time trying to cipher such matters. I simply put the pair together on the shelf with his latest novel, \u201cFreedom,\u201d the other day while unpacking books. Again.This is the fourth time in less than four years I have gone through the arduous process of book unpacking. Job moves have sent me hurtling around Texas and the Midwest, a middle-aged pinball zinging about \u2014 grateful for a job in these wacko times but flung about by the flippers of fate. I\u2019m so grateful and optimistic, actually, that my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I just bought a house in North Austin.<\/p>\n

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Hence, the Moving of the Books once again, from the place I leased last fall.I am in the midst of one of those ugly cross-town moves that last for weeks and involve sloppy packing. The last three moves were company-paid and traversed considerable distance. This trek is self-financed, meaning I will move everything I can myself. My friends are grateful I have become, like them, too old to risk back injury moving the really heavy stuff, like appliances and couches. I\u2019ll hire a crew for that. But the books are my bailiwick.<\/p>\n

Unpacking boxes of books soothes me, somehow, though lugging them upstairs to the bedroom where roughly half will reside puts a strain on my legs. It invariably takes far longer than it should. I become distracted by this title or that, happen across old friends that I forgot about owning. This probably explains why I possess two copies of \u201cThe Corrections.\u201d<\/p>\n

I always come across books that I have not yet read \u2014 a result of years being mailed unsolicited review copies at newspapers where I worked, gifts from friends and family that haven\u2019t made it into the \u201cneed to read soon\u201d pile, books I bought but never got around to delving into. Having lots of books still unread bothered me when I was younger. Now I realize that I will croak without having gotten around to reading this or that book that has been on my shelves for decades. As the T-shirt on the rack down at Book People, my favorite bookstore on the planet, puts it, \u201cSo Many Books, So Little Time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dear friend who died last January at age 94 was an inspiration to me, in more than one way. He loved books with a greater passion than anyone I have known. He bought them by the armload from Amazon, pecking out his order on a computer given to him by his daughters. His dining room table was covered with new purchases, stacked to near-toppling height. Shelves everywhere creaked under the weight of books, with other stacks on the floor creating a maze in his study.<\/p>\n

Unlike me, however, my friend had an incredible memory for what he had read, able to quote entire passages from books read a half-century or more earlier. I have a terrible memory that is getting worse. For self-improvement, I have been reading a fascinating book about memory and people who are able to train themselves to remember long lists of items, random number sequences, etc. I was telling a friend about it at lunch the other day but couldn\u2019t remember the title and had to Google it from my phone. There is something ironic about forgetting the title of a book about memory. It\u2019s called, \u201cMoonwalking With Einstein,\u201d by Josh Foer, a hilarious young man I met at a recent literary conference. Good thing it is sitting in front of me in the study, or I would have forgotten the title again.<\/p>\n

I am about halfway through unpacking books, which comprise most of what I own. My kitchen-related possessions take up about two boxes, the books about 50. As always, a few volumes have made it onto the designated shelf for books on my reading radar, as a result of unpacking. That has meant relegating a few back to the stacks, where they will likely sit unattended until the next move \u2014 which I hope isn\u2019t for a long time.<\/p>\n

The best thing about unpacking books is it recalls the memory of a similar column I wrote nearly four years ago. A few days after it was published, a woman emailed me, asking if I would like to go to coffee, that she enjoyed my writing. Perhaps we would become friends, she wrote.<\/p>\n

She is now my wife, the Beautiful Mystery Companion. She has a lot of books, too. I will be happy to haul them here from East Texas when the time comes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Print this entrySo, it turns out I have two copies of \u201cThe Corrections,\u201d by Jonathan Franzen, a popular contemporary novelist who I\u2019m still trying to decide whether I like or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}