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Wednesday 10 August 2016

One in, one out

When I moved back to Torino, one of the things I was most looking forward was the notion of my own library being finally reunited. No more books scattered around, no more digging through the shelves for a volume that is in the other city. No. Just one single and hopefully organized collection.

My dreams of shelves glory crashed almost immediately, due to a sudden and sad realization: space is not something one can ignore.
What happened is that I brought all my books back from Milano to Torino and added them to the one I already had in the flat.
Then I went down to the basement and got out the boxes of book I put there. Ok, shelves are starting to look a bit packed.
Then I went to my parents flat and brought back from there the ones I left there at different stages of my like. My mum also managed to sneak in some extra books for good measure. Ok, shelves do look way too packed, can I stack layers of book one on top of the other?
Then I discovered also my sister had books of mine in her flat and she was very keen to give them back to me, as she's running out of space too.
At that point there was only one thing to do: I went to Ikea and bought extra shelves to add on top of my book case.

Now got one shelf and half of free space, but I can't feel relaxed. It's obvious to me that, by my reading and shopping standard, it's a very tiny space. It can't last forever, but I need it to last as long as possible.
I decided to patch things up: I am trying to listen to audiobooks, reading more e-books (audiobooks are a bit more successful than e-books at the moment), going to the library.
I'm also trying to do something I've never been very good at: selling books.

As a Austen-esque Miyagi-san, I embraced a new mantra: "one in, one out". For every book I buy, one book has to be sold. For every new book I put on the shelves, an old one has to be taken off them. And possibly not be put on the bedside table or somewhere else in the flat.

So far it's going pretty well, I've got a certain number of books that, to be honest, I haven't reopened once since I finished reading them the first time. Also I've found out that I'm becoming slightly less attached to things. I'm less worried than in the past of the risk of becoming that kind of hoarder you see in TV shows, even though there are still some exceptions. For example, I still haven't decided whether the books I got for my birthday should count. And I decided that the volume of "Harry Potter and the cursed child" I somehow bought last week while waiting for the train is not really going to count. How come? Magic!

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