Why five wine boxes?

In September last year my husband, Gregory, a novelist, was offered a teaching job in Manchester and we decided to leave our beloved Edinburgh and move there so that he could take up the post.  A couple of months later we had found a friend who wanted to rent our flat and some people who were willing to rent theirs to us, and preparations for the move began in earnest.  The flat we had chosen to rent was a lot smaller than the one we were leaving; I say we, but the decision was mainly mine: faced with the choice between a fairly large, two-bedroom flat with hideous carpets, wallpaper and furniture, and a small, one-bedroom flat, bright, clean and nicely furnished, I convinced Gregory that the second was the better option.  "But what will we do with the books?", he hissed, as the estate agent politely pretended not to hear our deliberations.  "We'll just have to downsize", I hissed back.  We took it the same day.

Back in Edinburgh we contemplated the bookshelves.  Gregory had reminded me many times since moving in with me that all the books he had brought with him by no means represented the whole of his collection.  With great self-sacrifice and restraint, he implied, he had left a fair number in storage at his parents' house.  Nonetheless, I still had memories of the horror I felt the day he moved in, as box after box was carried up the stairs and deposited unceremoniously in the sitting room.  My flat had always been a minimalist haven; despite being an avid reader since childhood and engaged at the time on a PhD, I had acquired very few books.  Nonetheless, over time I grew to enjoy having more stuff - especially books - around.  It was wonderful to discover more about this man I was now living with through the books he had chosen to have around him.  By the time of our move south, despite the "one in one out" policy which had been in operation for a while, we had a fairly sizeable collection of about 1500 books.  The flat we were moving into had one small-ish bookshelf and we had decided we could take one of our own - this meant making a selection of about 150 books.  Gregory was saved from complete trauma by the knowledge that his newly-acquired office at work had a large bookcase in which books could be double - or even, he comforted himself, triple - banked.  The selection of the 150 became therefore mine to make.  These were the books that would surround us at home, the select few that could be drawn upon at any time of day or night, the most precious, the most essential, those that could on no account by parted with.  As I set about the task, I found my choice falling into two categories - those books I had already read, some several times, and which I knew I could not be without, there being a strong chance that I would read at least some of them again in the course of our stay in our rented flat, and those which I had always meant to read and had not done so yet.  Some of these in the latter camp belonged to me - presents appreciated at the time but thus far unread, purchases lighted on in the wave of some enthusiasm, tomes I felt I really should have read - and some were books of Gregory's that he had particularly recommended to me, or which had always intruigued me.

So much for the books.  As for the boxes, we discovered that a certain kind of flat-ish wine box, liberally dispensed to us by the French wine merchant around the corner, was ideal for packing books, inserted spinewise in rows much as they had been on a shelf.  About five of these did the job.  And the rest?  Several went to second-hand bookshops and charity shops, some were left on the shelves, our very accommodating tenant assuring us that he would be happy to have them there, and the rest packed into boxes and left in a large storage cupboard in the flat that had always been a godsend and was excelling itself now.  And so on 7 November we packed all our condensed belongings into a Europcar transit van and drove them down the M6, Gregory at the wheel and me clutching a peace lily whose life would have been endangered by the free-for-all in the back.

Having settled in and arranged the books in their new home, I decided to commit myself to reading all of them.  After all, I had chosen each one, elevating it above its many competitors, with the full intention of reading it at some point.  Why not now?  I would work my way through the books I already actually owned.  I would not be distracted by the temptations of new books coming out, by sudden memories of books I had been meaning to find in the library, by enticing reviews and recommendations.  This blog will be a record of that project.  I hope you enjoy it and are inspired to go back to your own bookshelves and read what's been patiently sitting there.  Unless, of course, you already have - but how many people have actually read all the books they own?  Certainly not me - until now.