Buried in books

I love books. Really. I love, love, LOVE, love, love books. Novels, mostly. I guess I haven’t grown up enough to appreciate the non-fiction side of life. My mind just gobbles up any fantasy, mystery, romance, or classical authorship that I can get my hands on. It’s a wonderful feeling to escape from the world and become part of someone else’s. To watch the events of unreality play out before you. To feel for the characters as if you have known them your whole life. To go to places you have never been, in times that you will never experience except through the eyes (and words) of others. It’s such a thrill.
Imagine my utter glee (and minor jealousy) when my mother was given a library. Well, actually, she was given all the books in the library. My mother’s godmother started the library in a local parochial school many years ago. Recently, the school had to close and they were getting rid of all the books. My mom went to the school and took home all the books that were there for the asking. She brought home a mountain of paper and ink which she then placed into storage boxes. For several months, they have remained in storage awaiting the right time to sort through, catalogue, and organize this treasure.
I have been waiting to hear that my mom “had the time and energy” to embark on the enormous project. It is such a daunting prospect that I knew she would not enjoy doing it alone. My curiosity finally reached breaking point. I could not wait any longer to explore the priceless objects in my mother’s possession, so I volunteered to help. After all, what is more inspiring that someone else’s assistance when you have a huge project before you? For the last several weeks I have been going to my mother’s house once a week (she lives over an hour away) and helping her catalogue all the books. We spend as much time in the day as we can (i.e., as long as the kids are playing nicely) going through each book and writing out the author and title onto index cards. So far, we have processed about 600 books and we are only about half done!
We have found some amazing books. Some are out of print. Some are out of date. Some are damaged. There are mysteries, histories, biographies, poetry, classics, textbooks, sports books. All of them are unique. As we talk about what to do with the collection we always discuss how we will know what books she will want to keep. The conclusion is always the same. We will just have to read them. And we thought the cataloguing process was lengthy. Wait until we have to read over 1000 books!!