My bookshelves at home are voluminous (no pun intended) but entirely disorganized (maybe because my ex used to insist on alphabetization). Chuck and I have bookshelves in the bedroom (two deep), in the hallway, in the upstairs closets, in both studies, in the basement, in the kitchen pantry,and on a giant arc of shelves he constructed in the tv room, books that come from 1. my old house, 2. his old house, 3. his dad's old house, 4. my two sons' education as well as from their (and my) childhoods. I was looking randomly around this morning and had the distinct pleasure of coming upon books that I suddenly want to read right now, one of which I've read many times before but decades ago (The Brothers Grimm) and one I've dipped into a couple of times and shelved a couple of times and forgotten about a couple of times (800 Years of Women's Letters, edited by Olga Kenyon with a forward by P.D. James.)

From now on I will use this blog to search among our shelves for single lines or passages, today's being, from 800 Years, Florence Nightingale writing to her father,who supported her, against the wishes of her mother, in her Social Work:
In a difficult life (and mine has been more difficult than most) it is always better to clearly decide for oneself
what grievances one bear being unavoidable, what grievances one will escape from, what grievances one will try to remove. You have mentioned and do mention to me the perpetual grievance it is to you to have such expenses in the female part of your family...London...they say they do it on my account. I will just once, say it is not so. You say they have spent four months in London last year. Did they stay in London on my account when i was in Russia? If they did so it must have been to buy me one bonnet.