The Librarian: a Sunday Shoe Story

sling-back wedges by Frankie & Dany

Everyone knows that I collect books, but I'm not sure that most people understand quite how ridiculous my collection is. I've lost track of the official count, but the last time I checked it was over 600. And that was more than 2 years ago. The few people who have been to my house inevitably end up seeing my collection at some point, and get the picture, but I've found that explaining how many copies of certain books I have is often a good substitute for the real deal. Neil Gaiman's Stardust is often my go to example, since I have (almost) legitimate excuses for owning multiple copies. Like the fact that there is a graphic novel and a regular novel version. And then there's the single issues of the graphic novel and the collected version (I still need issue #4, so if anyone sees it let me know!). And one of the novel versions is autographed. But that still leaves 3 "extra" copies. My final excuses are this: one copy is my reading copy (the white spined trade paperback), and one is my shelf copy because it has the cover I like the best (the brown old-book copy), but the final copy has no excuses. I have it just because I'm a collector. It's extremely likely that I'll find more copies throughout my bookhunts and be unable to resist buying them, so don't be too surprised to find that eventually I'll have many more. Some probably not even in English!

And you all thought my shoe collection was out of control. HA!