An Elegant So-Leu-tion

Those of you who followed the introduction to this blog--particularly Part 3, "Remainders"--know that the issue of books encroaching on our space has been an ongoing conversation between Leu and me. The short version is that she says Get these books the hell out of here and I say No. To further complicate matters, we're expecting a second baby in June, and he's going to sleep right where the second bookshelf is now. (Hmm, two kids, two bookshelves. Never made that connection before....)

In any case, I think Leu might secretly be using this as an excuse to get rid of what's been a real eyesore for a long, long time now. The image at the top of this blog is a photo of what our shelves look like. I've always been kind of partial to that full-to-bursting look, but I can see where that's a bachelor-type thing, like a cardboard cutout of Princess Leia in that outfit from the beginning of Jedi. Here's an outtake of the current version of shelves that didn't make the final cut:

 Here's another:

 

These are in our son's room, mind you. When he goes to bed at night, the poor kid doesn't know if he should ask us to read Goodnight Moon or the Greeks. He wakes up sweating in the middle of the night.  "What's the matter, buddy?"  "I dreamed I was living in the stacks at the library...."

Well, apparently one advantage to staring at these damn books for the past five years (in this location, anyway) is that Leu started doing what she does, which is putting things together. "We sure do have a lot books with red spines," she says to herself one day, or "What an interesting shade of blue." Then she rents a car, goes to Home Depot, disappears into the bedroom for a while, and voila!

And:

As I told her, it's perfect:  aesthetically pleasing, functional, and inherently bookish. In addition, it got me to thinking about the color palate that publishers use to choose their covers. Those blues and greens are a little too similar to be coincidental. They must come out of focus groups.

But this is not an entry to indulge in over-analysis. This is an entry to share. Enjoy the brevity while it lasts, because I promise to be back soon with overly long musings about my life as a reader.