bookshelves

Borders lives on with us

/ Meg / 29 Comments

It’s no secret that the closing of Borders devastated me and countless other readers. Regardless of your feelings on “chain” bookstores, Borders was our only new bookstore in three counties. My closest bookstore is now a Barnes & Noble, and that bad boy is a 45-minute drive up to Annapolis. Ack.

Its loss has already been felt profoundly in my community, and seeing its shuttered doors now makes me feel sick. Though our local branch just closed for good last week, it’s been “closed” to me for a month; I haven’t been able to go in as the shelves grew sparser and Borders was being dismantled. It just made me too sad.

But my boyfriend had a great idea.

When Borders said “everything must go,” they meant it — and that included the hundreds of wooden bookcases that once supported Borders’ wares. As Spencer bought a home this summer, he’s been looking for storage options — and thought Borders’ bookshelves would be a great addition to his place. Though I was initially saddened by the idea of ripping the cases out of the store, I’ve since converted . . . and realize now that if Spence hadn’t taken them, someone else would have.



So he bought quite a few and, with the help of a friend, got them up into the condo (in the middle of a hurricane and flash flood, but that’s another story). We started getting them all screwed in so he could begin filling them last night, and I got to show Spencer my considerable alphabetizing skills — all from my Borders days, of course. We alpha’ed his DVD collection around 9 p.m. and have the first three bays ready to rock and roll.

Sorting through his movies was soothing, and it’s a little weird to see the shelves there — especially when I looked at them for years, working eight- or ten-hour shifts during college — but it’s really nice, too. I feel good that a part of Borders will live on with us, and these bookcases will be cared for by a reader who will think fondly of her days at the store as she fills them: me!

And don’t worry . . . I’m sure we will have them filled in no time. More bookshelves just mean more books, right?

Booking Through Thursday: Storing books

/ Meg / 4 Comments

booking_through_thursLet’s go Booking Through Thursday!

This week’s question: “How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

I would have thought I’d be very anal-retentive about this, but I’m actually not. I store my books in only one particular way: they get tucked onto whichever shelf I can fit them! I have limited storage space and can’t really organize them the way I would want to — which would probably be alphabetical. The only books on my shelves are ones I’ve finished and can’t bear to part with. All of my TBR books are in stacks on the other side of my room — towering piles of them by my bedroom door. It’s not terribly efficient, but at least most of them are in one place!

The only exception to this would be my Jane Austen books. On the top shelf of my white bookcase, I have all of my JA novels, fiction and biographies grouped together! There are probably around ten titles now, not including the ones I haven’t started yet. I like knowing they’re all together — and with my compilation of Austen’s self-penned letters! It makes me happy!