The joy of having to reorganize your shelves because your favorite authors are writing new books, with specific referrence to Rachel Neumeier's newest book

I have been very kind to myself this past month, lavishly buying books that I knew I'd enjoy.  For instance, I treated myself to Rachel Neumeier's newest, an anthology called Beyond the Dreams We Know, which has stories set in a variety of her worlds (and one that isn't).  I enjoyed it very much, particularly the story set in the world of The Floating Islands, in no small part because the main character, a girl of no social status to speak of, points out a problem to the powerful men in charge, and they listen to her respectfully and agree that action is warranted.  It was all very good reading though, and if you like Rachel's books, you need it.  Which is what I told myself, and so I bought it....

And I also have been binge buying Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona books, because they are so much the perfect comfort read fantasy sort of thing I love.  I am unfortunately a little late to the part, though, and the first book of the series, which I got from the library, is out of print and now costs c. $200, which is more than I can spend on a book at this time (and for the foreseeable future sigh).  And I also treated my self to Bryony and Roses, by T. Kingfisher (the third of her books I now own) and am pretty sure that I'll be steadily buying everything she's ever written as funds allow (I need more than one birthday a year....).

Which led to one of the nicest sort of problems a bibliophile can have--how to fit these books, with comfortable space left for new ones, on the shelf of "best loved sci fi/fantasy that isn't necessarily kids books and that isn't Ursula Le Guin or Robin McKinley."  Because those two, and most of the best loved middle grade books, are on their own special shelves.

So all the Elizabeth Goudges got moved to the hallway shelf, books I don't need to own got put in the library donation box (like Charles Williams...not going to re-read him again to the best of my knowledge and belief although now I am having second thoughts....), and  Sarah Beth Durst got to move from small over-flow shelf 1 to main shelf, and that is good.

Here are before and after pictures of Main Shelf (although the Goudges had already left the top shelf), and left hand side of hall shelf.  As you can see, I now have lots of room for more of Rachel's books, room for the new Megan Whalen Turner and new Patricia McKillip (d.v.), and room for more everyone else too (although there won't sniff be new DWJones books....but on the other hand there are lots of Discworld books I need).  So this will hold for a little while at least....

nb:  this is a tiny fraction of my books...I'm very lucky in the Patrick proved to be a dab hand at building built in bookcases, and very generous in allowing my books the lions share of them; you can see an earlier iteration of some of my shelves here.  The big bookshelf of this post used to be my son's, but he decided he'd rather have the guest room across the hall and took all his Warriors and Rangers Apprentice books with him, and the bookshelf became open to new occupants...

(in case anyone is worried about me, as well they might be- the bookself is bolted to the wall).

So in any event, a lovely interlude, both reading-wise and shelving wise!