Batgrl: Bookish Hooha

So the hardest thing for me, the book lover, in this move is packing up my books and not knowing exactly when I'll be seeing them again - they may sit in storage for a few months or longer, because things are kind of up in the air right now. So far my ways of dealing with this:

- Reading the really short, fun books before packing them. That way I'll have gotten my fill and won't want to do an immediate reread. Also nostalgia reads are often great for getting your mind off of things.

- Buying ebooks, but holding off on reading them til now. That way I can pack away the paper books because I have a huge pile of ebooks waiting to be read - and those can be easily taken with me, anywhere. (Which is a HUGE comfort. I'd not really realized how much books are a security blanket til this move.) The fact that I've purposely kept myself from reading them has also been sort of fun too - I now have them to look forward to. And the best thing about reading an ebook now - I don't have to rush to finish it, and I don't have to worry about misplacing it in the boxes. And I can read multiple ebooks and not worry about their physical size. (The multiple books thing is more important now that I find it's harder to pay attention to some books - stress is making me an easily distracted reader.)

- Taking several boxes of books with me. Some I've taken on ahead to my temporary-stay-home (with the parentalfolk), and because I have problems choosing, I'll have one box to pop in the car. I'll end up with around 20 or 30 books that I've either not read or didn't read all of (nonfiction books that I used for research). That may seem like a lot (and the box weighs a ton) but it means that I have a good selection. Also most of these don't exist in ebook form, which means there's no other way to consume them than in paper.

In the past my music collection has been a similar worry for me, and video games too - but using "the cloud" has solved a lot of these issues. All my music is now in mp3 format, though only about 70% of those have a CD as backup. Some are backed up in the cloud, but some aren't, and I'm not going to be able to go through the thousands of files to figure out which. (I'm fond of remixes, which don't always end up on albums.) But since I'm focusing on books this move, I've been less antsy over music for some reason. Many of my video games are either in my Steam Library or are online, and so no real worries about backing up there. All I have to do is make sure I make a copy of a saved game or two (Dragon's Age Origins, I don't want to lose those character files, and I think I may need to figure out how to save all the DLC just in case) and I'm set.

I've given plenty of books I don't want anymore to my local library's bookshop (they raise money to be used for the library). The only difficulty in that - besides finding a time to go when I can get parking near the door - is keeping myself from browsing in that bookshop, because it is SO tempting.

Getting everything else done in the next 13 days? (yeek.) Well, we'll see... (I have a lot of backup plans. Like "I can always mail X after the movers leave." Also I repeat to myself "this is all going to work out" a lot.)