I have a problem. I lose books.
I'm an avid reader, rarely to be seen without a book somewhere about my person. But I'm also an absentminded one. I get distracted for a moment, I put a book down (at an ATM, on a train or a bus or a plane, under a restaurant table...), and three hours later I realise it's missing and I'm probably not going to get it back. Augh!
This year alone I've lost at least four books: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett; Svaha by Charles De Lint; The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers; and most recently Piratica II by Tanith Lee. There have been a few more near misses. They disappear when I move house, when I'm running errands in town, when I take them over to friends' places (although in that case I stand a better chance of getting them back).
If I were to take a cool, detached view of it, I might say that this is my subconscious method of culling my book collection: as it is, I tend to need a new bookcase each year (I'm not quite sure what happens when I run out of wall to put them along; in another couple of years I may find out). If that's the case, my subconscious sucks in its choice of expendable titles.
Does anyone else have this problem? Better yet, does anyone have a solution (aside from 'leave the books at home, you nitwit.')? Are there treasured titles you've never been able to regain? Have you ever found someone else's lost book, and if so, what did you do with it? Was it a good read? Were you able to return it? Has someone found a copy of Going Postal, last seen on top of an ATM in the Myer Centre, Brisbane, last December? Have you ever found a lost book, after losing all hope of ever regaining it?
I'm an avid reader, rarely to be seen without a book somewhere about my person. But I'm also an absentminded one. I get distracted for a moment, I put a book down (at an ATM, on a train or a bus or a plane, under a restaurant table...), and three hours later I realise it's missing and I'm probably not going to get it back. Augh!
This year alone I've lost at least four books: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett; Svaha by Charles De Lint; The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers; and most recently Piratica II by Tanith Lee. There have been a few more near misses. They disappear when I move house, when I'm running errands in town, when I take them over to friends' places (although in that case I stand a better chance of getting them back).
If I were to take a cool, detached view of it, I might say that this is my subconscious method of culling my book collection: as it is, I tend to need a new bookcase each year (I'm not quite sure what happens when I run out of wall to put them along; in another couple of years I may find out). If that's the case, my subconscious sucks in its choice of expendable titles.
Does anyone else have this problem? Better yet, does anyone have a solution (aside from 'leave the books at home, you nitwit.')? Are there treasured titles you've never been able to regain? Have you ever found someone else's lost book, and if so, what did you do with it? Was it a good read? Were you able to return it? Has someone found a copy of Going Postal, last seen on top of an ATM in the Myer Centre, Brisbane, last December? Have you ever found a lost book, after losing all hope of ever regaining it?
