Where are my books now?

My obsession with books continued for many years and I accumulated a lot of them. Actually, I have not counted them and maybe there are not that many but after my last move from Gdansk to Sydney I was not able to unpack all of them. I could not find space on available shelves. My old bookcases disappeared in my travels; they did not seem to be good enough to travel the world with them. I saw them being crashed. This happens sometimes to our treasures. They stop to be treasures.

 I used any possible space to store my books - wardrobe, build in shelves in one of the rooms and unused fire place. Strange places for books? Yes, but in desperation this seemed to be good enough. I could at least see them. Some of the books stayed in boxes waiting for a bookcases or bookshelves to arrive one day. As it was difficult to organize quickly, I covered the boxes with a cloth and placed some ornaments on top of the covered pile. I decided that it looked good enough and forgot about it. Nobody commented looking at the boxes pretending to be a corner table. I myself forgot about them. And so time passed. Now and then I had some ideas how to solve the problem but they seemed to be difficult to put into practice. Those days it is very difficult if not impossible to find bookcases in furniture shops. There are display units with spacing between shelves not suitable for books. I decided that I will need to have something made to order and explored this possibility for some time. I either did not like quality of potential bookshelves or prices quoted. And time was passing.

The situation would have lasted for a long time yet if it was not for one helpful friend who rightly thought that I postponed the issue for much too long. I talked to her about my bookshelves projects too many times not making any progress. She was clearly fed up with hearing the story too many times and I realized that eventually I need to make a move or stop talking about it. Suddenly I had a brain wave. Why not buy an old bookcase. Antiques are at the moment completely out of fashion and this makes their prices really affordable. I did some internet searches and found something that looked acceptable. Old definition classifies an item over 100 years old as an antique. According to this definition selected by me bookcases are antique, beginning of the XXth century. Times moved on. It took one visit to an antique center in Sydney and my new-old bookcases were on their way to solve my problem. There were piles of books everywhere at my place for few days. I did a lot of dusting, polishing and vacuuming but I was happy amidst this horrible mess. I was re-discovering my old books, many of them I did not remember at all. Out of sight, out of mind.

Sorting the books I reminisced on periods in my life. There were times when I focused on positive thinking, management and leadership, spirituality, coaching, philosophy, psychology, antique and art. Not many novels amongst it all. Some from my younger years. Hmm… Does that make me a very boring Jack? Luckily, I found quite a few humorous books which I loved to read in my twenties. I hope that they had some positive influence on my psyche. I typically read more than one book at a time so I added a newly found fun book to the currently read ones. It balances my reading very nicely.

Now, most of my books are again on shelves and accessible and I have the feeling of succeeding with
one of my long postponed project. Ufff...

  There they are!