I spend Sunday afternoon assembling a new bookcase, a tall dark double-width deep-shelf wooden case for our TV room. (Now to be called the TV-and-reading room?) Bookcases in two rooms now — our apartment’s center of book-nerdy gravity has shifted, no longer just the one room. I’ve moved most of the floor-cluttering book overflow into the new case, but the arrangement is still temporary, haphazard; Laura and I have yet to start the book-reorganization and reshelving process in earnest. (Which books go in which room?) Also, the room for now smells pleasantly sawdusty.

Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary, setting up his book collection in a new house:

I’m in my library, surrounded by empty shelves and growing columns of books. It occurs to me that I can trace all my memories through these piling-up volumes. Then suddenly everything seems redundant, all this accumulation of printed paper. Unless it is my own experience that isn’t necessary.