Red Red Wall

I now have a red accent wall painted in my living room. The apartment complex offers to paint a wall for a person moving in. When I moved into this apartment I was worried the darker wall would make the place feel small so I opted not to get a painted wall. I soon regretted my choice and earlier this summer when I won rent credits at the apartment BBQ I donated some of it to their breast cancer walk fund and one of the apartment managers offered to paint my wall and clean my carpet. So I emptied the bookshelves, put everything in the bedroom, locked the cat in the bedroom for a day and last Thursday when I came home there was my shockingly red wall. It is quite a contrast, feels like I live in a whole new place. It also gave me a chance to look through my books and when they somehow didn't all fit back into the bookshelves decide which ones to find new homes for. I lug around from apartment to apartment as few books as I can get away with. But I never know when I might need Advanced Calculus, or Business Ethics or the Physics of Star Trek. After some perusal I decided I will pawn off my Midwest hiking/biking books to one of my unsuspecting adventurous friends in Minnesota. Some books I keep for hope; a Hiking Guide to the Wind River Range; others I keep from a sense of accomplishment; Operations Management, others because they make me feel smart and nostalgic; Abstract Algebra. There's the fiction that is too good to part with; more Ursula LeGuin books than I am willing to admit, and then a variety of reference books I actually use; various field Guides, a Thesaurus. Every time I move I try to pare down the book collection. I decided at one point that popular fiction is better passed on to others, whether through Goodwill or personally, then carted around. Every time I move I have to carefully evaluate whether there is some need to keep each book, it keeps things under control. I've kept it down to four bookshelves, a manageable size, fiction in the bedroom, nonfiction and favorite books in the livingroom. Problem is I didn't move this year.