Spring cleaning kicked in over the Easter weekend as I have two sons, of fairly wide variance in ages, that no longer desire to room together. The oldest has decided that the basement would be his soon. So, we cleaned out the garage, getting rid of much stuff that should have been gotten rid of long before this weekend. Then we tackled the basement, removing stuff that should have been thrown out years ago, and moving some stuff that is still useful but not used frequently to the garage.
We also "discovered" about fifteen solid boxes of books. These would be books from the first decade of the EWN. Books mailed that I'd asked for review copies of, books mailed that I hadn't asked for copies of, books that I can't believe I didn't do something with immediately (by do something I mean donate out of my house immediately) and books I bought, not to mention the couple hundred literary journals I bought over that time.
Some truly nice surprises though, the type that slow cleaning down drastically. A couple to highlight from an early box were Rick Collignon's The Journal of Antonio Montoya. His debut novel, and the first in his (currently) quartet of SW novels set in his fictional Guadalupe, NM, this is the original hardcover published by MacMurray & Beck. It's a lovely book, maybe 4x6" in size, 217 pages long and just feels special to hold--and that's without reading it which only enhances the experience.
Another was a book that to be honest, I didn't realize I owned--Tod Goldberg's debut story collection, Simplify. Maybe I just knew I didn't know enough back them to order the hardcover that sold out before the book even completed getting printed, but I forgot that I had it at all. I brought this one upstairs to make sure I peek at it next month during National Short Story Month.
Comments