Some of my fellow writer friends and I want to start a critique group. We all live in the same part of the huge metropolitan area…. none of us would have to cross any bridges or traverse glogged freeways to meet up. But where? The library charges money. The Senior Center doesn’t have a room for 4 to 6 writers to sit around talking about their work. Restaurants are noisy. My apartment, frankly, is a dump. My project today is to Do Something About All These Damn Books.
Well… about the apartment…. I just moved a couple of months ago and still have boxes here and there. But the real problem is the books. Stacks and stacks of them. Books I read years ago. Books I’m in the middle of reading now. The hundred or so that are “To Be Read”. The reference books, which one doesn’t ever really read. They are only to be referred to. In emergencies. That probably explains the dozen books I have on Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guide, How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It, The Field Manual FM-21-76 US Army Survival Manual and 75,000 Baby Names. Wait, that last one is in the wrong pile.
So, of my thousand books, the reference section is quite extensive. There are the 31 cookbooks, most of which have only been used during the annual Hallo-Giv-Mas three-month-long food fest that is part of my heritage. Not to mention my waistline. I could use some of these cookbooks to create treats for my writer’s critique group and invite them here…. if only I could dig out from under the books to make some room for guests. Should I use the books to create chairs, instead?
I also have 17 books on Organization. Organizing from Within. Stop the Clutter. It’s All Too Much. One Minute Organizer, Unclutter Your Mind, Clutter’s Last Stand….. as soon as I can decide on the best spot for the organizing books, I’ll read a few of them. Most of them are in the “To Be Read” category.
Well, of course there are other categories. There are the wishful thinking shelves filled with gardening and home repair books. I have been an apartment and condo dweller for most of the last fifteen years. But I know how to change out the flush assembly in a toilet and diagram the central fuse box. Actually, that does come in handy, even in an apartment. Better hang on to that book.
Finally, there are all the writing books. How To Write A Romance, Memoir, Screenplay, A Book In Thirty Days, How to Write How To Books, How to Write When You Can’t Write, How to Write When You Are Surrounded By Mountains of Books and There Is No Room For Your Damn Critique Group To Sit Down And Eat A Cookie.
I will take that last one off the To Be Read list right now.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
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