Packing up and moving is always a bittersweet activity. I find it especially difficult to pack up my books, as I always want to stop and read my favorite passages, or just browse through them again. Seeing someone's initials on a book they gave me might make me sad or happy with the memory of receiving it. There are books that I have borrowed and need to return, books that I've read many times and cherish, and books that I'm still waiting to read--Anna Karenina for one.
Here is an excerpt from one of my favorites:
From the first chapter of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek: (If you have not read this book, you are denying yourself a great pleaure.)
"I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virgina's Blue Ridge...It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about. The creeks--Tinker and Carvin's--are an active mystery, fresh every minute. Theirs is the mystery of the continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecudity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection."
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