Shelf Control

I don’t have no shelf control, no self control when it comes to keeping the shelves (physical and digital) manageable. The days that my To Be Read (TBR) was something that could be read within a reasonable amount of time are long gone. Hell, I can’t even remember a time like that.

One of the reasons book buying bans and other measures to curb the influx of books do not work for me is that I immensely enjoy organizing my shelves, both off and online. For me, this is one of the great joys I get from books besides reading and talking about them. Every now and then I empty the entire Kallax and re-shelf the books to suit my current fancy.

(Yes, I have an entire bookcase dedicated to Little Penguin Classics – sorrynotsorry)

Here you will find my newest arrivals and updates on the status of my Mt. TBR, the current and past state of my physical shelves and of course my eReaders (plural), who have become indispensable to me.

A Rainbow of Books

The eye-catcher in the studio where I live is a 5×5 Kallax which functions as a room-divider but more importantly, as my main book case. As anyone who has ever visited the place was drawn to it and discussed it with me (it is impossible to miss though) I feel more than a little bit proud thinking about it.

I like to organize the shelves from time to time in order to incorporate the newest books or make some re-arrangements. Lately – thanks in no small part duo to Covid19 – I have radically reshelved everything based on color. Looking at it brings me instant happiness, but there is some little distress since it has become much harder to find books (I need to think – what did the cover look like again).

My beloved eReaders

Want to find out why I own three eReaders, all of which work just fine?

Read more

My ‘stable’ contains three eReaders and I cannot overstate how much I liked them. At first I was a bit hesitant because I like real, dead tree books so much, but I found that both are complementary and not mutually exclusive.

I usually take an eReader with me whenever I expect there is some time where I can read, especially during travel and when I am donating plasma at the Red Cross. For the former I can take hundreds of books with me which weight as much as a single dead tree book, for the latter it is a serious advantage that I only need a single hand to both hold the eReader and turn the pages.

Also at night I usually grab one of my eReaders, since I have a tendency to fall asleep quickly sometimes (i.e. not enough time to place a bookmark) so it is great that they keep track of where I was exactly.

Another thing I like about my eReaders is how robust they are. I have bought my first one (a 2nd Gen Kobo Glo) back in 2014, and a 2nd Gen Kindle Paperwhite in 2015 and they still work fine! I have changed laptops and phones twice since that time. There was a small scare when I thought my Kindle was dying in 2017, but it’s 2020 and he is still alive and kicking.

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What about you? How do you organize your shelves? Is your TBR manageable? Do you read eBooks or not? – Let me know in the comments below.