Book collections and book-a-brack

Last week we were invited to a lovely dinner party with new friends, Valeria Susanina and Jack Womack. They are both lively minds, he's a writer, and their bookshelves are well organized offerings of loveliness. Their friends were lovely too. Since Jack and I are the same age, he handed me vintage 1960s and 70s catalogs to peruse...each item of clothing, toasters, luggage, clocks, brought back time-shots, the way sniffing Chanel #5 invokes my Grandmother's elegant and yeasty soul. I hope to get back soon to devour his books on typography and design...

I came home and looked at my disorganized and doubled-up collection. The books used to be in order, by kind, before the fire. Then they were shoved in boxes and stored for three years. And when I put them back in our rebuilt apartment, I had half as many bookshelves. They are a hodge-podge, treasures hidden behind paperbacks and magazines and old mechanical cameras, all teeming in their shelf slums. I want to invite Jack to see my really cool books. Show Valeria some of my drawings and our family photos...and the truth is, I will have to, finally, go through the books and reorganize, prune fiercely and shed the unread or no longer loved tomes. Another donation trip to the housing works cafe is in our future...

It is a daunting thought. The books, just now, are shifting in mutiny and shoving their spines out in a j'accuse way. I pity the ones that will have to leave...but look forward to finding once again my 1910s books illustrated by Frank Pape, novels embellished with Ernest Shepard's amazing line work, and the small joy of having nearly every Diana Wynne Jones book... and the poetry, and the books about maps, and the design section, and the fine art... plus I need an entire bookshelf for the volumes I have designed inside and out, with maps, illustrations, and graphic design. Although even there I am willing to make cuts. Only the best, dammit, only the best shall remain.