Those books I mentioned, that are flowing in. They need to go somewhere. Question is where.
We have lots of shelves for books. They already have books on them. New arrivals are on the floor, but mostly piled on top of the low-ish bookcases in the front room. Those are low, in order to leave room for paintings to hang above. We have lots of paintings, too.
Such conflicting interests as pictures and books are not good. And many of our paintings are already stacked in cupboards and against walls and next to wardrobes.
I have this cunning scheme of replacing a dresser with more bookcases. The homeless glass and china could go live in the kitchen. If we give the kitchen a make-over. Hmm.
Forgot to mention that I favour the minimalistic look, which also requires some bare bits of wall showing.
One author I talked to had got a man in to line her study walls with shelves, as he had already done for another author. But he promptly had a nervous breakdown. So, no shelves for her either, I suppose.
While considering the kitchen idea, it’ll have to be Oxfam. But with a few exceptions, the choice of what goes won’t be easy. An option could be to remove all those boring looking computer books we seem to have, which don’t belong to me. Maybe dispose of one or two a day, and he wouldn’t notice.
The Occasional Bookwitch 
I had this problem. Then I discovered Bookcrossing – http://www.bookcrossing.com – and my problems were solved. Apart from the books I really want to hang on to, my bookshelves are fully dynamic now.
But I really, really want most of them!
Last night, I spent 5 hours tidying the bookcases and toppling floorstacks, determined to weed out unread and unreadable lurkers and give them to Oxfam before Christmas. I now have a towering pile on my desk of ‘must-reads’ that I’d forgotten I had and, um, exactly 4 copies for Oxfam. I even found ‘doublers’ that I can’t bring myself to part with – well, you just never know when you might need a spare Jane Eyre or Edith Wharton, do you….?
Help.
FIVE HOURS? Did you not go to bed, or something?
8pm – 1am (I heard the university bell chime from the opposite hill). You know what it’s like when you start tidying out books, things jump out at you (‘I’ll just read a tiny bit of this one…oh it’s years since I read this….’)