I started the packing process this week. Spent $28.88 on boxes. I had no idea cardboard was about the same price as sushi.

There's something wholly depressing about packing away my belongings. Perhaps it wouldn't be so depressing if I hadn't done it about eight times in the last three years (my going to college was like an endurance test--for my parents). Perhaps it wouldn't be so depressing if I didn't always start with my books. But I pretty much have to start there though, right? I mean, they pack well, in small boxes, and I don't technically need them for day-to-day life.

But packing my books is actually an incredibly personal experience. They have to get all out of order to fit into the boxes better. The hardcovers always go on the bottom because they're so huge. Then the little novels stick into the crevices like chinking. I organize my books according to genre, then alphabetize them according the author's last name. Just like a bookstore. Because I'm a nerd who likes to know exactly where to find her copy of, say, Persuasion. When I see them crammed in boxes like that, some horizontal, some vertical, and all completely out of order, I think I might know what it would feel like to have OCD.

Is it any wonder that sharing a bookshelf with John is probably the most intimate experience of my life?

Did you know he owns roughly 900 books by Kurt Vonnegut? The "v" section of fiction is almost as big as the entire poetry section. And I haven't read any of those books! How can one man have written so many books anyway? Shakespeare, a complete a total literary genius, wrote 37 plays and people are always trying to say he didn't write them all. Christopher Marlowe, you say? Oh please. Doctor Faustus was just plain boring.

At this point I've packed four and a half boxes. There's still a whole shelf to go.

So what did we do yesterday? Went to a bookstore and bought me two new books.

*I'll give whoever remembers the joke behind this entry's title a peanut butter sandwich.*

Labels: books.

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