I will return to my series on collectible books and book value in the future, but due to current events in my own life that involve a heavy application of U-HAUL and way too much quality time at gas stations, this blog is taking a quick side trip (like they are ever quick) down the topic of Your Books and Moving.

When housed, shelved and organized just so, lined up like happy little kids all holding hands in the sunshiny lights of your living room, bedroom, or if you have so designed it, your own personal library room — they are beautiful, colorfully edged entrances into so many worlds that you may daily return home to bask upon them with a sigh of contentment and, dare I say, a gently warm feeling of personal pride.

I did that. I made that.

My book collection.

Spread far and wide across many bookcases in my home. Books found and purchased, researched or stumbled upon. They all came through my hands, precisely curated one by one, over years and years.

I know every title, every wrinkle. Every folded corner and plot twist. Every bit of history, or mathematical equation. Plus the glorious question marks of the titles yet to be plundered. Future treasures to page through with a favorite hot drink and crunchable yummy snack.

With salt, please.

Oh, and a dip.

I’m on a hummus kick right now. Making my own. Freshly blended warm hummus from just cooked garbanzo beans all blonde and chubby. With lemon, tahini and salt in just the right equation of taste perfection — yes!!

…but I digress…

(Snack distractions.)

(They say in writing that when your character starts to feel sleepy that’s often the writer’s own subconscious saying, “Go to bed, silly!”)

(With me, I write in food. My stomach is saying, “Eat, you ninny!”)

(Apparently my stomach speaks with the spirit of a crotchety grandma of the bygone days.)

(I mean, who says “ninny” anymore?)

…And I’m back.

So book collection. Every title is precious. Cared for. Gazed upon in wonder. Cherished for each of their individuality.

Loved.

But then…

Lo, dear reader.

That love and dedication comes into question. Deep heartful devotion to pulp and ink, a foundation of self and life thrown into complete uncertainty. Disrupted with a volcanic shift, and explosion of life and limb with one foul, destructive, dining room tablecloth yanking, clear the desk with one arm swipe, dramatic word utterance:

Move.

Yes!

The connection between you and your book collection you thought so sure, so complete, so unbreakable in its certainty will be tested.

Move.

When thoughts of “Never” and “Absolutely not” and “Over my dead and rotting corpse still atrophied to this grand and forever tome of knowledge and ideas that I will take with me into the next life” will suddenly change to, “Do I really need two copies of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica? Or every copy of Catcher in the Rye I have ever read. Or every year of the Guinness Book of World Records from 1975 to 2012?”

Is that author really a favorite?

Did I really like that series?

Will I ever read this again?

And the list of questions go on and on and on…

Four little letters that together can blow what you thought was your brick-house relationship with your book collection into a tornado of straw with one utterance.

And there is one fundamental reason for that, dear readers.

One intrinsic and unchangeable fact that no matter what you do or think or feel, this eternal law is irreversible. Unavoidable. And this fact give this word all of its power.

That one fact is…

…books are f***ing heavy.