Books and books and books and books

Caitie was sick today, so I took off to take her to the doctor. This afternoon, she was feeling better so we decided on a simple project (ha) - we decided to go through the book shelves in our living room and sort the books.

Let me say this here - we have a LOT of books.

We decided to sort by interest - my interest, her interest, and shared interest. We ended with two double stacked shelves of both, a little less than three double stacked shelves of her interest and two bursting shelves of my interest.

What amazed me was how many TYPES of books we had. From memory, we had books in the following categories: YA, MG, sci-fi, fantasy, classic, modern lit (think James Patterson), horror, romance, comedy, puzzle, reference, cooking, sewing, travel, writing, religion, philosophy, poetry, education, pop culture, short story, memoir, biography, theater, trivia, and music. There may be one or two more I missed, but that's quite a list! We are certainly readers - avid readers - and our interests greatly vary.

Sure, a couple of those books may only be represented by one or two volumes (I think romance is just a couple of books Caitie brought home from work in a pile), but some of them have substantial numbers in our collection.

Some were books we haven't gotten around to reading yet (Doctor Sleep, I'm coming for you next!) and some were books that we just couldn't bear to part with (we've both read To Kill a Mockingbird, but Caitie couldn't handle giving it up!).

Some are books that are just for fun - joke books, puzzles etc. that we pull out every now and then for a mental challenge or a laugh.

Surprisingly, I did notice a couple of missing books from our collection. I didn't see copies of either of my favorite books - Les Miserables and 1984 (though I know I own copies of both). There are still more books on other shelves, and books downstairs and upstairs, so I'm sure they're amongst those.

I even found a magazine I had a story published in. I found a couple of grammar mistakes in the story, but turns out I was a pretty good writer even then. :)

We even found a small handful (maybe half a dozen) of books we have duplicates of.

So, the end result is a stack of 70+ books we're getting rid of - either donations to the library, selling to the used book store, or just throwing out [anyone want a copy of 2008s Writer's Market? No? Didn't think so :)].

So off to the used bookstore we go, to replace some of these books we're willing to get rid of with more that will be added to the unread masses.

There's something kind of sad and beautiful about that...

Finished Breaking Bad - no spoilers here

I'm not going to write a treatise on the show. There's been plenty of virtual ink spilled already about the show, and I don't think I'm going to really add anything much to the discussion that hasn't already been said.

What I will say is that the series was great. Perfect? No, of course not. There were a few too many coincidences for me that led to things happening (I suppose in something this complex that must be inevitable) and some over the top ridiculousness that pulled me from the series because of how surreal it got. For any who have seen it, the end of season four would be a prime example. Yes, it was satisfying as hell, but realistic? Hardly.

Some questions remain, which I also suppose is inevitable. It's a lesson in writing - not EVERYTHING needs to be wrapped up with a neat bow, though that was something I learned earlier from Lost and The Sopranos. That said, this was one of the more satisfying season conclusions I've seen. We found out what happened to most of the main characters (one of them is a bit ambivalent) in a way that left me not feeling as though there was more story to tell.

That said, I felt like the series was a long movie - a very long movie - in a way I've never seen before on tv. It was certainly worth watching, and one I will recommend to anyone looking for a gripping drama to invest some time in.