The Bluestocking - where Spring has sprung and the grass is riz.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Welcome all. Can the gerbils please ensure that all the Tunnocks products are safely stowed in the capacious larder, and perhaps the quokkas could be responsible for counting everyone onto the bus and back off at the new thread - many thanks!

Can I come and live with you just to read your books?

Please?

I'll even read the duplicates.

And I'll bring a lorry full of Tunnocks.

@Boiledbeetle

Wish we’d got Private Eye; that feels very cool.

We had Punch delivered every month. This meant I could nab it after school and read it before my dad got home from work.

Don’t think we ever did anything “for a change”. How exciting…

I've seen that ad too, Myrtle, but my interpretation is that they cut the film before Mr Walrus places a box of chocolates on the bed, turns to the camera and says 'And all because the lioness loves..'😄

😘

Honestly, Marie, you are such a flirt!

You'll be here a while, there's 11 bookcases in one of the rooms!

There are many different sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica though so that should cut down some of the reading time, as you'll be able to miss whole shelves! Just read the latest version!!

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary is a long read, but it does come with its own magnifying glass, but then there are 2386 pages with 9 miniature pages on each page!

Thinking about it you may need two lorries of Tunnocks.

I'll make up the spare room!

Oh my god the books are not in hight order you know tall to small, it’s shocking

And the paperbacks (not shown) are not sorted by colour! Its terrible!

I am lost in admiration of your bookshelves @Boiledbeetle . When I crossed the Atlantic almost 23 years ago I brought a couple of thousand books with me - but I’d already given 26 boxes of them to charity shops in the UK before I left. I’ve bought more obviously since I’ve been here, and given more away to thrift stores, but nowadays my addiction is more surreptitious because so many end up on my Kindle.

Love the clock book.

I'm going to try to use 'wrought' more in my daily language, I'm already trying to repopularise 'cheerio!'. I think I'll start by asking my family if they like what I've 'wrought' for tea...unless that's an incorrect usage <glances anxiously toward Pedant's Corner>.

It's a lovely morning bar gerbil. Could you wrought for me some granola with Greek yogurt, honey and fresh berries and, of course, a big pot of tea? Thank you.

I think whether you 'wrought' or 'wreaked' the tea depends on how much of a mess you made in the kitchen
Now if you asked that otter in to make the tea, it would definitely be wreaked not wrought!

A propos of that otter in the kitchen [was that on our previous thread? sorry if I'm referring to something people haven't seen - it was a video of an otter absolutely trashing a kitchen. Poor thing was probably desperate to escape.] -

did you notice how the otter knew how to open presses - sorry, cupboards ?
Like those videos of bears opening fridges and helping themselves to the contents...
They are allegedly wild animals, right, and yet they know how to access food storage in a modern kitchen. Hmmmm. Food for thought, eh?🤔

Maybe Gary Larson knew more about the real animal behaviour than David Attenborough:

All I remember was the strong intimation some time in first year university English that anyone who described a 'playwrite' instead of a 'playwright' would be seized by demons and carried off to hell.

I've got a water 'otter in my kitchen.

You breakfast madam. Of course your request wrought havoc with the AI.

(I love my book clock as well!)

@Boiledbeetle at last I have met my soulmate! I won't post a picture of my wall of bookcase, too many people have seen it behind me in Teams and Zoom calls, but I do believe you would approve of it!

A wall of bookcase? is that per house or per room?

The only room without books in my house is the bathroom.

I've tried to do what I now do with clothes - one out, one in - but it doesn't seem to be working very well, I treasure old books as much as I crave new ones🙄

There's only one full wall bookcase but there are many other bookcases in the house, and even more books in boxes that get brought out on rotation.

One in, one out is never going to work for books, you're just deluding yourself Marie!

One in, one out is never going to work for books, you're just deluding yourself Marie!
You're so right, Magpie😒

But I did apply the 'did you wear this item of clothing in the past year?' rule to some books, ones which were not rare or valuable or out of print, and which if I want to read again, I can easily borrow from the library or buy another 2nd hand copy of.
I found I could let go of quite a few on that basis, as I wasn't attached to the actual physical book. That freed up a bit of shelf space - almost immediately filled by new purchases!

But nothing surpasses the pleasure of owning a precious book - the book dealer offered me a lot of money for one particular book I have, and all the things that he pointed out that made it so valuable to sell, were all the things that made me want to keep it! Fair play to him, he understood

That gerbil, Grace, was a very congenial breakfast companion. The small one (probably from the batch of babies we had recently) seemed to think she was a fascinator, kept climbing my head. I didn't catch her name, she was very giddy. I sent her outside, the micro pigs were giving rides...literal piggy back rides...to the young'uns.

Grace told me she was in a serious relationship with Gemma. They've been an item for a while now. She didn't explicitly say it but I was getting vibes that we might have the first second (sorry, I would never have thought they were your relatives android no wonder you've never mentioned them) Bluestocking wedding.

I am currently sitting in my library - we converted the garages when we moved in, and one was a den for the boys, and is now dh's office, and the other was my library - books on three walls, floor to ceiling. We also have at least five other bookcases scattered around the house, and they are all full.

We are planning to put new shelving in the library, when the money from mum's estate comes through - we've found a really good, flexible design that is shallower than the IKEA shelving we're using now, so will make the room a bit more roomy. Doing this will necessitate packing up all the books in here, and I am going to take that opportunity to weed out the ones I'm not going to re-read, and make a bit more space.

As you say, @MarieDeGournay, if I find I do want to re-read a book I've got rid of, I can go to the library or get it second hand or on kindle.

I'm on a thread at the moment about books posters thought no-one else had read - it is a cornucopia of memories on there, and I have added several books to my re-reading list.

We have reached the decluttering stage of life and have recently chucked out a lot of books.

We have books and bookcases everywhere... DH at least now buys his crap SciFi on Kindle, so I'm not stumbling over piles over books with covers that are mostly black but with lots of red and embossed tinfoil and spaceships and bizarre weapons.

And now we see what draws us all together in the Bluestocking!

The Blue Stocking adapts to our needs yet again….

We need ladders for those high shelves. Unless the gerbils can climb up and lob things down to us on request.

Are those pots full of interesting teas or, er, other interesting leaves?

I've selected some of the gerbils who can read and they are currently in librarian training.