The Pink Shoe Diaries

Adam and I are involved in an ongoing project in our apartment: Project Get Organized, also known as Project Get Your Shiz Off The Floor and Into A Bin or Some Other Kind of Storage Apparatus. Or Take it To Sarah's Parents' For Storage. Do It.

You see, we have a lot of stuff. We have whittled down or collection of stuff over the past few months, packing up spring and summer stuff into bins, throwing away things we know we'll never use, bringing stuff we should throw out but can't quite bring ourselves to do it to my parents (like a LAMP made out of a BARREL. I am not kidding).

What seems to be happening is a binge and purge type situation: I throw out a bunch of shoes, some bags (okay, ONE bag. But that still counts), some clothes. And then a month later I seem to have replaced everything I got rid of.

I was contemplating this yesterday, as I was straightening up the spare room. I tripped over a pile of books and realized that there is one area of my life that would be so easy to organize that I have completely neglected: my books.

As you know I was an English major in college and as a result I own over 100 paperback novels, from Margaret Atwood to Shakespeare. I never sold any books related to my major back, because I always felt like they were books one SHOULD own. And when I look at them and think "I read all of these" it makes me feel like majoring in English wasn't the most usless thing ever, because I loved it. And I also wanted to remind myself that there was a time where I read 2 or 3 books a week. God knows I am lucky these days to read ONE book a month.

So in addition to shaming me into deciding to read a lot more, it also gave me a brilliant plan. As I sort through my books, I am going to make them into three groups: Books I Will Never Read Again, Books I Will Reread Once And Never Read Again, Books I Know I will Reread A Lot (this list is already prettty long: East of Eden, Wuthering Heights, I Know This Much Is True, Valley of the Dolls, any Barbara Kingsolver. These books I can, and have, read dozens of times and will never get sick of them).

Anyway, the part that concerns you is that once I have sorted out what books I am never reading again, or will read only once more, I want to give them away. So as they become available I am going to post on here and the first person to respond gets the book mailed to them.

Or if there is some kind of "classic"novel you know you want to read, check with me because I have quite a few of those (especially Faulkner) and would be happy to send it out.

Currently I am re-reading Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. I am almost done ,so read the review/synopsis here and whoever asks first can have it by the end of the week. I have to tell you, I never wanted to read this book because it was totally a "name dropped" title in a lot of my classes . You know, like people would mention they read it and expect you to infer from that info that they must be totally cosmopolitan and concerned about the world. But it really is a great story.

Next up? Siddartha by Herman Hesse. I actually never read this one. I heard so much about it from other people in my classes that I picked it up and just forgot I had it. So let me know if anyone wants this when I am done with it too.

So you see, I am killing three birds with one stone here: uncluttering my apartment, reading more, and helping out friends.