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Moving: Chapter Two

Packing Books

Friday, April 23, 2010

Packing books is a big part of moving for us—as you can probably imagine. It's one of the first tasks to tackle because unlike towels, dishes, pots and pans, and underwear, we don't need daily access to our G.A. Henty books.

C. S. Lewis said,

"In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see."

Sitting on our shelves are millions of words which tell thousands of different stories. To quote Lewis again, "Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it." Beyond the great variety of ideas and thoughts expressed inside our books, there is a beauty to the diversity of sizes, colors, and thicknesses. Some are old, to be read carefully, attentively. Some are over-sized with bright, colorful illustrations which make good stories fun and easy to read. Some are expensive because they're worth it. Others are the kind of cheap paperbacks with dogeared covers and cracked binding that look like they've been read and loved many times. Our library might not be quite as extensive or diverse as the one C. S. Lewis grew up with, but it's a good start.

It was rather frustrating, though, to fit all this rich diversity into cardboard boxes that will stack neatly into a truck.

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