My books arrived

After more than a week of waiting, uncertainty and then panic, my books from Atlanta arrived! I gathered more than 100 books during the conference (I only paid for about 15 of them). About 25 made it in my suitcase, but the rest had to be shipped for weight reasons. I lugged the entire 15-volume set of Secrets books (a perk for volunteering at the book room) and some choice reading material while I awaited my shipment for a week, back home to Salem, Oregon.

I was fretting over how much this shipping would cost because they didn't tell me when I dropped the boxes off for UPS ground, nor did it appear on my room bill. I just checked my credit card statement and they charged me after the fact $46.17. That's not too bad for four boxes totaling 17 pounds. It equals buying about seven paperbacks. I got my money's worth, that's for damn sure.

I eagerly watched the reach 5 p.m. yesterday so I could run home and put my books away. Part of the excitement is that I moved recently and spent a lot of time with my dad building a wonderful bookcase. A bookcase that looked empty waiting for those books from Atlanta.

Empty no more! I took a picture of it because I'm so excited.


I don't have my writing books on there because they're on my desk and I'm missing a few recent reads because I haven't put them back. The bookcase doesn't look that great in the picture, but in person it's glorious. We primed and painted the shelfs a dark brown color and my dad secured them to the wall so it wouldn't topple over.

The top two shelfs (minus about 10 books on the right of the tippy top) are all "to be read" romance, romantic elements, chick-lit, erotica, etc. Most of those are from Atlanta.

The themes for the left cubby on the third row is castles, Scotland, Greece, Greek mythology and random funky non-fiction books such as urban legends, ghost stories, forensics for dummies, etc. Random reference tools that I may call upon for writing.

The right cubby on that shelf is Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, most in multi-volume books. Then a couple other vamp fiction books before moving on to vampire non-fiction. Don't laugh, they really are non-fiction.

The left cubby on the fourth shelf is a few random paperbacks that didn't fit anywhere else then Anne Rice's vampire books. The right cubby is full of wonderful romances. On shelves five and six, the left cubbies are both true crime. The vertical books on the right cubby on shelf five are commercial fiction. The horizontally stacked books on the right of shelves five and six are what I call "book club oopsies." You know, those mailings that you forgot to say no to then forgot to send back so you end up buying them? The good part is I actually wanted one of those books. The bad part is, I don't want the rest. But they're unused hardbacks so I feel I should sell them.

The bottoms shelves are the least read or cared-about, they are random non-fiction books like Carlton Sheets' making money off real estate, Matthew Lesko's free money stuff (I did PR for him for about a week) then other stuff.

You may be asking why I dedicated an entire blog post to this. I don't have an answer my friend. It may be because I'm crazy. Or I'm too excited about finishing my bookcase. Or maybe it's that I don't have a life. I'll let you decide.

Afterthought: One year ago I would have never thought I'd read a romance. Now they take up three shelves of my bookcase. Go figure? What a difference a year makes.