It’s true that the younger side of the Stack mounted toward the ceiling in relatively tidy fashion, like the floors of a high-rise-a concession to its greater proximity to the doorway, and thus to the more trafficked area of the bedroom, where a sudden collapse could have been catastrophic. I have no idea why we called this entity the Stack, considering the word’s orderly connotations of squared-off edges and the shelving areas of libraries. At all events, the result was a kind of homemade Arc de Triomphe, extremely haphazard-looking but basically stable, made of some three or four hundred books. For some reason, though, the Stack always looked to me as if it had defied gravity (or perhaps obeyed some other, more mysterious force) and grown down the far side of the dresser instead. At some point in the Stack’s development, it had overtopped that piece of furniture, whereupon it met a second tower of books, which, at some slightly later point, had begun growing up along the dresser’s other side. The Stack had started in a recessed space near my father’s half of the bed, bounded on one side by a wall and on the other by my parents’ dresser, a vertical behemoth taller than I would ever be. Helens of books, since it seemed possible that at any moment some subterranean shift in it might cause a cataclysm. But by the time I was in my early teens it was the case-and seemed by then to have always been the case-that my parents’ bedroom was home to the Mt. I suppose back then it was just a modest little pile of stray books, the kind that many readers have lying around in the living room or next to the bed. I can’t remember it in its early days, because in its early days it wasn’t memorable. It was this pair of convictions that led to the development of the Stack. The other, which governed the upstairs books, was instituted by my father, and was based on the conviction that it is very nice to have everything you’ve recently read near at hand, in case you get the urge to consult any of it again and also that it is a pain in the neck to put those books away, especially when the shelves on which they belong are so exquisitely organized that returning one to its appropriate slot requires not only a card catalogue but a crowbar. One of these, which governed the downstairs books, was instituted by my mother, and involved achieving a remarkable harmony-one that anyone who has ever tried to organize a home library would envy-among thematic, alphabetic, and aesthetic demands. Items requested on a Saturday or Sunday, or during closed periods, will take longer to arrive.When I was a child, the grownup books in my house were arranged according to two principles. Deliveryĭelivery times vary, depending on the distance the item must travel. You will receive an email notification when your item has been delivered to your chosen library. You will be able to see the progress of your requests on the ‘Requests’ tab of My SOLO. The maximum number of items you may have awaiting collection at any one delivery location is usually 10. This allows you to collect items directly from shelves in the library without needing to consult a member of staff at the desk. In some locations, items may be eligible for Self Collect.
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