Man, I think my books breed at night.
That’s the only explanation I have for why I am constantly short on bookshelf space. Every time I move or reorganize my books or otherwise try to get them all sorted and properly sitting on shelves, I find I have nowhere near enough space for them.
I don’t buy that many books every year. Or get that many as gifts, even, these days (people who have seen my to-read shelves tend not to give me books. I’m not sure why).
Anyway, it’s a neverending dilemma, and when I moved to my new apartment, things were complicated by the fact that it uses baseboard heaters for warmth… and they are mounted along the nice, long walls in the main area. Walls with no windows. Walls which are perfect for bookshelves. But it’s unwise to block a baseboard heater, and I didn’t really relish the thought of having bookcases several inches out from the wall anyway (here in earthquake-ridden California, it’s wise to have bookshelves bolted to the wall, or at least shimmed to lean back against it).
I found enough wallspace for my existing bookshelves, but that wasn’t nearly enough.
After much angsting and gnashing of teeth and swearing at the friends who suggested tentatively that I consider *tfu tfu tfu* purging my collection, I hit on the somewhat-obvious solution: wall-mounted bookshelves!
So I hied myself hence to Southern Lumber and got myself some lumber and hardware. I had to backorder the brackets — I needed twenty-four of ’em, and they only had twelve — but by the end of this week, I will have my bookshelves. Forty-two more linear feet of space for my books to rest on between their bouts of breeding more books.
We’ll see how long it takes for this bookshelf to fill up.