Crosspost: The solution to Too Many books

I'm crossposting this from another blog of mine:

So, in response to ameliaearharts post, “Is there wizardry on how to never have overstuffed shelves?”

Sadly, no, it’s not wizardry. It’s the thing that pains readers the most in the entire world and the problem they find the hardest to solve: just not having so many books.

You actually have to force yourself to the realization that you have the shelf space you have, and if you want your shelves to look good and to treat your books well, that’s the space you can use and you just can only have what will fit. I rebelled against that idea for DECADES, since I was a kid I would just box up books and store them all over the place. Boxes under my bed, in my closet, in the attic, whatever. Just to make room for more books.

The thing was though that I wouldn’t read them for months, sometimes years, and in some cases they stayed in the attic until my mom said “you’re not reading these donate them to kids that will.” When I was 25, so obviously they’d been up there a while. And so finally what dawned on me was that there were some books I will always want to have, and will always want in case I’m going to randomly want to read them. There are books I own because my friends wrote them or gave them to me.

But at the end of the day, if I’ve got a book that I’ve not read, or that I won’t pick up again, or that I’m keeping for any reason other than I love it and want to read it over again, then that book deserves a different home than one where it’s getting ignored. At that point, I’m treating that book no better than a decoration, no matter what my good intentions are.

Now, I couldn’t really do this when I was living in dorms or moving every year because it actually was quite true that I didn’t _know_ what space I had. And because I wasn’t ready to actually face the whole thing yet. But when I got married and my husband built my bookshelf, I looked at it and realized that I had enough shelves to house over 60 square feet of books, and that even when you add in his books (which were few, we actually had a lot of duplicates that I sold when we got married) I had more books than any one person could really enjoy, and I told myself that I was doing the world a disservice by not letting someone read this book. The book deserved to fill it’s purpose in life, which is to be read and cherished. And while I might have enjoyed the book (if I had read it, seven years in a bookstore means I had a LOT of books I picked up and never got around to reading) maybe I didn’t love it the way someone else would.

And since I’m not having kids, keeping all of my books from when I was a kid felt like denying things I loved in my childhood from other children who should experience the things that made my life good. I kept my favorites, but for the most part I reread them one more time and either donated or sold them. Because unless I’m going to read them again, another child should get to experience it. I see it a bit like Indiana Jones and his “it belongs in a museum” thing.

Now, obviously I’m not saying if you keep books that’s bad. Like I said, I have over 900. I can’t remember what the last count was when I finally finished cataloging them a few weeks ago. I’m also a sucker for wanting complete matched collections, so I have every Star Wars book from before New Jedi Order, for example. I’ve got almost every graphic novel Crossgen published (I’m missing a couple because I didn’t start collecting until they were out of print). I adore books and I have a LOT of them.

But I also made it a point to have a very specific space for them, a large one, and I decided that at least for now, my books have to fit in that space. If I add too many and I’ve got a shelf double-rowed or a stack sitting somewhere, then I need to sort my collection again to find things I may be ready to part with.

I also massively curtailed my spending on books. At least until I got an e-reader, but that’s another story. But I stopped buying just anything that caught my eye and started getting stuff from the library first, then buying it if I truly loved it and wanted to own it. I got pickier about what I wanted to own versus what I just wanted to read. And I told myself that my worth as a reader wasn’t measured by how many books I owned but how many books I’ve read, and how much I enjoyed them. It definitely helps that my county has a fantastic library system, so that wouldn’t have worked when I was a kid in a small town. But it helps now.

So far this has worked for me. It was hard, it was really hard. But it was one of the last steps in what’s now been about seven years of me really changing my perceptions of the things I own and my living space so that I could live a less cluttered life, because let me tell you I was on a one way train to hoarding when I got married. And the struggle to get away from that has been about dealing with a lot of stuff, both mental and physical, and so I don’t say any of this lightly or like I think people can just turn around and magically figure it all out.

What I can say though is that those changes have all made me happier, and helped me financially, so that’s why I’m always willing to talk about it when it comes up, in the hopes that maybe somebody else will be helped by listening. I’ve not regretted a single book I’ve let go of, because I waited until I was ready to do it and let them go in the right way for the right reasons. Being able to walk into my guest room and just scan the shelves for something to read next, without having to sort through and move things just to see what I own, it’s huge. And on top of that, now I actually know what I own (I used to buy extra copies of things because I’d forget I had it) AND I usually know exactly where it is when I want it. I can pinpoint the shelf, about where it is on the shelf, and what’s next to it on either side within a few volumes (maybe not exactly next to it).

I haven’t had to do a big “take everything down and put it back” reorganization in years. Instead, every few months when I’ve got a handful of new books, I’ll work them into the shelves while going over them and deciding what maybe can go this time.

It’s not always perfect, but it’s working so far.

But seriously, ebooks have brought all of it back, so I also am just channeling a lot of my old habits right into my Nook, so I am a bit of a hypocrite here. I just can’t apply the same principles to digital stuff, I’m not at that point mentally yet I think.

Leverage Season One

I imagine I'm like a lot of people, in that I first discovered Leverage when it was in repeats on Ion instead of during it's original runs on TNT. Which is a shame, and says something, I think, about how much TNT must have advertised it. So it's a bit of a shame that I'm only getting into the show now that it's been cancelled after five seasons, but I think it's still worth looking at so that people can check out the DVDs. Which I think is a very good idea, because Leverage is a very good show. I had been watching episodes here and there when they were in repeats, but finally we sat down to start renting the discs in order and watching the show the right way. While it's actually not that hard to catch up and know what's going on in any given episode, the show does benefit from being watched properly.

Which is kind of refreshing actually, American television seems to have gotten itself into this binary where either a show is like a simple sitcom where nothing changes too much and there's no overall continuity between one episode and the next OR it's a Lost-style puzzle where if you miss one episode you've missed out on so much important story that you have no idea what's going on. I miss the in between stuff, and Leverage is perfect for that particular problem of mine.

If you haven't caught the rerunning marathons, the story is basically that a former good guy and insurance investigator has teamed up with a band of professional thieves. He leads them on complicated con jobs and heists, not for money for themselves, but to help people who have no other course of action. His rationalization is he picks up where the law leaves off. How well that rationalization works for him and those around him becomes a pretty good plot point during season one.

Now the one big problem with season one is that the order of the episodes is a mess. I've not seen something this messed up outside of cartoons in a long time. It aired in one order, it was shot in another, it was put on the dvds in a third configuration, and it was intended to be a completely different way. At least that's the best I can glean from Wikipedia, because it becomes glaringly obvious that the episodes on the DVD aren't in the proper order. Character development seems to bounce all over the place, and the relationship between Nate and Sophie especially suffers. In the end, I think the reason I'm not buying into their relationship and their chemistry even as I watch season two is because season one was so messed up on the DVDs. I believed it more when I was watching whatever random episode was on in syndication.

Every episode of the show follows a pretty specific formula, but instead of becoming boring and predictable, this makes the show more fun. You can see some of the plot twists coming, once you know how the story usually goes, but you still enjoy the ride. The con always goes bad, but in a way that the team expected and that was always part of their plan from the beginning, which you find out about in flashbacks at the end when Nate explains to the mark exactly how they got to them.

The first episode, The Nigerian Job, is a great pilot for the series. It sets up the characters, it gives Nate his motivation, it shows you all of their special skills in memorable ways, and it sets up the formula as well. It also sets up something else that's great about Leverage, the talent of the guest stars. It's hard to run a series where every episode has to rely on the talent of the guest stars, and I've seen some really fail on that front, but Leverage doesn't.

Now, one thing you have to do to love this show is let go of a need for realism because there are a few things where you're just going to be too confused to let it go otherwise. Especially The Mile High Job, where the team foils an evil plot while they're all on a plane. Almost nothing about that episode really holds up to much scrutiny (especially the fight in the plane's bathroom, they try to make it look small but yeah right). But you let it go because Hardison is so hilarious that it's okay.

Which is really what the show is about, the characters on the team. To be honest, I find the main protagonist the least interesting of the bunch. His backstory is compelling but the "my fatal flaw is being so depressed I've become an alcoholic" bit doesn't really do anything for me. Parker, Hardison, and Elliot are the stars of the show and their antagonistic friendships and complicated personalities shine from the very beginning. Parker is an especially well done character, because they've managed to take somebody with some large and obvious problems and managed to not just play it for laughs or melodrama, but for a realistic mix of both that fits the tone of the show and still takes her seriously while making you like her.

They play a bit in the first season with an overall bad guy in Nate's former co-worker, Jim Sterling, and he's interesting enough (and played by the always enjoyable Mark Sheppard) but he doesn't really become too strong a plot thread which I'm thankful for. We needed more time to see the team enjoying themselves and getting good at what they do before they're ready for a real nemesis.

The first season obviously ended in a way that shows that the creators weren't sure if they would get picked up for another season, and it's actually pretty touching and a good place to end, if it had to be that way. But I'm glad there's more, because there's too many fun cons for them to pull and too many annoying untouchable bad guys for them too take down.

If you liked the A-Team at all, then you absolutely need to watch Leverage. If you have even a slight interest in heists and complicated con jobs, then it's also your kind of show. But if you just also enjoy shows with good, complicated characters then you really should give it a try. There's five seasons now, so time to get started.

You can't see it, so why is it important?

For no good reason lately, there's been a rash of people grumping again about how many spaces are "proper" to put after a period.

You can't see it, but everything I type for this blog has two spaces after every period, and it's going to stay that way. You know why?

Because it doesn't actually matter.

Listen, I get the arguments that we should start teaching that it's proper to only put one space. Because the idea of putting two spaces was due to an outdated technology (specifically, typewriters, which is where a lot of our randomness comes from, including how our keys are laid out, or so I've heard). Okay, we change with the times, that's cool. Kids today already pretty much know how to type from birth, so I can't imagine we have typing classes anymore, but sure, let's teach them that you put one space.

After all, with the code for most webpages, it doesn't actually even recognize the second space half the time. Or at least that was the way of it back in the day when I did HTML coding by hand.

Because you see, I'm also very old school when it comes to how long I've been doing this stuff, and that's why I think we need to lay off of people about this whole thing. No, teachers in communications classes shouldn't be teaching two spaces.

But we also shouldn't act like it's incorrect either. At the moment, because we're in a transition, BOTH are correct. It's like fish or fishes. It's not wrong, people who put two spaces aren't evil, and getting angry about it or even cranky is actually really dumb. Save your energy for something important, like defending the Oxford Comma.

I used to type about 60 WPM when I was in middle school, and it was through a sort of slapped together hunt and peck style coupled with so many years experience that I just knew where the keys were. But I looked at the keyboard, and despite being fast by the standards of the day, it wasn't as great as it could be. Then I took a typing class because it got rid of a requirement for school, and the teacher forced me to learn to "touch type" or whatever the kids today are calling it. Proper typing technique, fingers in the right places, not looking at the keyboard, all that fun stuff. She actually put stickers on my keyboard so that I couldn't see the letters anymore.

I learned to type not just faster, but twice as fast. I can get to 120 WPM without even trying that hard these days, and actually at the moment my typing speed is one of the things I can use to earn money. It's a marketable skill, the fact that I can type so quickly. And I do it because I don't actually think about it. It's all muscle memory and mostly unconscious. I don't think out "now I need to type B, here's the B, now I need to type E, here's the E." I just think the word and then it's there on the screen because I've practiced so much that this is the way it is. My typing speed is a necessary part of my life, and again, it makes me money.

Part of that typing speed is that I don't think when I put a period at the end of a sentence. I just hit the space bar twice and move on because I'm not actually thinking about anything that my hands are doing, it's a weird disconnect when you think about it, but there it is.

So if you're going to sit there and be snotty and sneer at somebody for putting two spaces at after a period when I do that because I'm actually REALLY GOOD at what I do, then you just come across looking like a jerk. Just shut up and ignore how many spaces are there unless there's 3 or 50 or something, and move on with your life. The teenagers will put what they want to put, and in twenty years we'll be doing something else entirely. They're already changing communication entirely, just let them do it and be the old fogy who does what they want anyway.

So let's get back to arguing about the Oxford Comma. Because I will defend that one to my last breath.