I think every available wall in our home has a bookcase–many of them floor to ceiling.

I have all my paperback murder mysteries—mostly Agatha Christie and Rex Stout and Dorothy Sayers–on a small black metal shelf. One of my bedroom walls is covered in bookshelf, and it houses many of Engineer Husband’s science and math books. We have another large shelf full of children’s science books, another with US History-related books, and another world history related books.

In the living room we have a shelf full of Picture Book Preschool books, another with fiction, and another with mostly Bibles, commentaries, and art books.

We have holiday books, cookbooks, foreign languages and biographies shelved in the gameroom, and each of the urchins has a shelf for school books. Oh, and there’s more fiction in Organizer Daughter’s bedroom, and more picture books in the boys’ room. And I still have books in boxes in the garage.

I’m ashamed to say that our shelves don’t look nearly as neat as Carmon’s and MMV’s; we have a bad habit of stacking things on top of the books in the shelves–notebooks, a radio, videos, a rolled-up poster, science supplies. I can see these things just in the bookshelf next to my computer.

Last but not least, I forgot about the books waiting for a home that are stacked behind my closet door.

What’s a bibliophile to do? Build more bookshelves.