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My book collection has been getting out of control again lately. The rather large bookcase scavenged from Tower Books (RIP) was packed to the gills and I had several tall, swaying piles on the floor in front of it. I kept making noises about needing another bookcase and looking for one once, half-heartedly, but I haven't seriously gone into search-and-procure mode.
Today, I decided I was going to crate up the ones on the floor and pull the ones I'm not overly fond of from the shelves and put them away in the hallway closet. It's just moving mess from one place to another, but at least it's not out in the open.
After everything had been boxed up, there was a bit of shifting needing to be done and as I was doing that, I noticed that a number of my books on the bottom shelves were kind of manky looking, with their bottom edges covered in a fine, white dust. Some of them looked as if they had been strangely chewed and others had discolored pages.
My first thought was one of the cats hosed the shelf done, but they didn't reek of pee, or even remotely hold a whiff of it, and the cats who used to be the culprits of such acts have long been dead. The white dust was also spread across the shelf itself, towards the back. The only thing I can figure is that it's some kind of mold, but I have no idea how that could have happened.
Needless to say, quite a few of the books were damaged beyond clean-up and I am very put out by this. Particularly over the loss of two of my Graham Joyce books (Requiem and Smoking Poppy) and my copy of Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, which was a first edition. Some of the others weren't nearly so damaged and I cleaned them up as best as I could, but I'm afraid of this bookplague returning.
All of that being said, ten or so books gone completely from my household, I've got more room on my shelves. Not quite what I had in mind, Universe. >:O
Today, I decided I was going to crate up the ones on the floor and pull the ones I'm not overly fond of from the shelves and put them away in the hallway closet. It's just moving mess from one place to another, but at least it's not out in the open.
After everything had been boxed up, there was a bit of shifting needing to be done and as I was doing that, I noticed that a number of my books on the bottom shelves were kind of manky looking, with their bottom edges covered in a fine, white dust. Some of them looked as if they had been strangely chewed and others had discolored pages.
My first thought was one of the cats hosed the shelf done, but they didn't reek of pee, or even remotely hold a whiff of it, and the cats who used to be the culprits of such acts have long been dead. The white dust was also spread across the shelf itself, towards the back. The only thing I can figure is that it's some kind of mold, but I have no idea how that could have happened.
Needless to say, quite a few of the books were damaged beyond clean-up and I am very put out by this. Particularly over the loss of two of my Graham Joyce books (Requiem and Smoking Poppy) and my copy of Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, which was a first edition. Some of the others weren't nearly so damaged and I cleaned them up as best as I could, but I'm afraid of this bookplague returning.
All of that being said, ten or so books gone completely from my household, I've got more room on my shelves. Not quite what I had in mind, Universe. >:O
