Books, books, and more books

After a few days of cataloging new books, filing all the new additions from recent classes (yes, yes, and trips to the library book sale), Sydney and I have finally reshelved all of our books over the three new bookcases.  These are, by the way, pretty much all of the shelves we can fit in our apartment, where we hope to live for the next three or four years.  Alarming findings:

– There are more books in Erin’s section than in Sydney’s, and far more than she can brush off as merely Sydney additions to the literature section.  Some of this can be accounted for by the fact that Sydney’s classes average a book or two per term (plus tons of articles), whereas Erin’s average 9-12 books per term.  But he’ll not let her hide from the fact that she’s overwhelming the home library, particularly since she was always the one urging more prudence with regard to book purchases, more use of the library copies, etc.  Yup, I’m totally in for teasing for a few years now.

– There just are not that many free shelves left.  We would set up a book rationing system, but we’re now done with classes and heading into dissertation stage.  Who knows what kind of books that will require?  Here’s hoping for a one-book dissertation for each of us!  But, oh wait, they don’t really encourage that sort of thing in my discipline anymore, favoring instead a theme that is traced through several authors, and Sydney has his heart set on writing a dissertation about a guy whose opus spans 26 large volumes . . . in Latin.  Gulp.  Okay, so books in the closet, books in dresser drawers, etc.

– After looking at book spines all day, we’re totally distracted from the reading lists we’d built up all spring.  Now we’re wanting to read things totally unrelated to our work.  Think our departments will understand?

Erin