Thanks to The Guardian, I have just spent a happy half hour nosing through other people's bookshelves. 

Share Your Shelf invites people to send in pictures of their bookshelves, and for someone as nosy curious as me, its a brilliant site.

There are small shelves, tall shelves, wall-to-wall shelves and shelves that are actually just piles of books.  Its the filing systems people use that really interest me - why would romantic fiction be right next to a modern art book?  how do you even begin to find anyhthing if it's not in alphabetical order?

My own shelves have recently been brutally reduced (leading me to discover that some charity shops just won't accept donations of books anymore), and relocated from living room to hallway.  My good intentions and alphabetisation have come under attack from random stray books placed here and there, wherever I can find a space, and often just lying horizontal at the front of the shelf.

Ideally, I'd like an actual library, but in a 2-bed flat in central london, that's never really likely to happen, so I shall content myself with other people's books, and keep dreaming of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, pages and pages of lovely lovely books.

so much for blogging resolve

All my big assertions about getting back into blogging, and where am i?  only eight posts in after a month or two, and some of them are just pseudo-inspirational poster quotes.

dammit.

its the whole thing about not really knowing what to blog about.  or rather, just wanting to spout my usual guff and then getting cold feet in case anyone i actually know stumbles across this. 

i could do that whole thing of giving everyone coded names, but with my memory, i'd forget what aliases i'd assigned, and folk would end up with about six different names and that would just be super-confusing.  mainly for me, but also for my one or two random visitors.

and that's something i'm not too keen on either.  the not having anyone read this.  i used to have a nice, regular little group of people who would read and comment.  mainly people that i read an commented on, but damn my iphone for its double-edged sword that on the one hand keeps me up to date with any new posts on the blogs I  like, but which also makes it harder to comment because i read via a reader, rather than going into the sites themselves.

*sigh*

it's all such a hard life.  which is another thing.  because it's not really that hard a life.  its all just a little bit angsty, and a little bit post-teen-drama.  and as my not-a-girlfriend keeps telling me, i'm almost 40, surely this shit should all be sorted so i can get on with the whole being a grown-up thing.  My very-much-perfected eyebrow raise will tell you all you need to know about my thoughts on that one.  particularly because 37 is still mid-thirties.