Books aplenty

Mind you, I have purged my collection several times before moving. I probably sold more books than I kept, and most of what I kept were reference books.

But two years in Portland has taken a toll on my minimalist library. Damn you, Powell’s! Damn you, Amazon! The weight of my possessions increases at a steady clip. And for what? I buy the books in the spirit of “research,” and then shelve them, only to review the spines of the books and feel pangs of guilt.

And now it is cold.

Winter is here, a time for shacking up in a warm room with a dog and a fireplace. Since I have no tv to while away the hours, the obvious solution is to start reading my books. That, or burning them. Something useful.

I have recommitted myself to L. Sprague deCamp’s very readable Ancient Engineers. I have a book apiece on daily life in ancient Rome and Greece, and a book on mystery cults of Rome. All pertinent to the Aqua Pura Trilogy.

I picked up The Long Emergency by James Kuntsler, detailing the coming woes due to peak oil, for research into a near future, post oil boom America that has returned to its frontier ways. The character Commie Cowgirl will make a genre-defying leap to this story from the Secret World Chronicles, where she was going to be a cowgirl superhero.
NaNoWriMo has ended, and I am left with a lonely 33,000 word start of a book set in a pirate utopia. The two books on historical pirate utopias may inspire the middle and end to that book.

And so on. I considered moving the unread tomes to their own shelf until I realized that the majority of my books haven’t received any attention. They’re all new! So I’ll just peck away at it as the NW rain turns to ice.