I lost an hour last night.
Even after twenty years in Chicago, the whole moving clocks back and forth is still odd to me. I grew up in Indiana and we didn’t play with time like that. (Indiana, the national holdout, has since joined the country in daylight savings time.)
My natural body rhythm is pretty scheduled. It’ll take me a few days to recalculate. My body will adjust its internal clock. It’s not as drastic as a time zone change but I’ll be slightly sluggish this week. I’m not complaining. Indisputably, anything named ‘spring’ in this never-ending 2014 winter is welcome. Spring forward, spring break, spring fling, spring cleaning….
I started my spring cleaning. This time my seasonal purge is focused on my books. As a writer, I dreamt of having a wall of books in my house. When entertaining guests, I imagined going to the wall, pulling out a favorite, and reading a quote that was perfect for the occasion. When I rehabbed my place, I had book shelves custom-made for collections of my literature. Literature defined in broad terms. I have a lot of killer hardbacks written by James Patterson and Patricia Cornwall.
My friend Sara is a Chicago Public School high school teacher. She started a lending library to encourage her students to read. The supply is dwindling. I decided to donate to her cause. Hoarding books is over for me.
The truth is ‘my collection‘ of books is not about cherishing masterpieces. It actually represents various phases of my life. There are mega murder mysteries. I have a whole series of detective-archaeologist books that I read only half of. If I like an author, I’ll anticipate reading all of him/her and buy accordingly. With this particular Elizabeth Peters‘ series, it became repetitive and dull. So, I stopped reading her. My shelves contain many books I never read. More correctly, I didn’t finish. Each of these books, I’ve read the first few chapters. If I didn’t like the author, I shelved it. There is a whole slew of Oprah’s book club selections that I just couldn’t get into.
If I love a book, I probably already gave it away. If something touches me in a profound way, I want to share it. I don’t want to store it. A lot of these books represent my best intentions. I had plans to revisit each book. Well, time is up. These books are moving on. They are going out into the world and sharing their message with a new generation. The end.