What’s the largest number of books you’ve donated at one time? For years I have purged in drips and drabs. A full tote bag’s worth, two at the most. My local library welcomed donations for the Friends of the Library’s sales once a month, and I kept them well stocked. Hazard of the business. Always books coming in the door. Eventually some need to head back out or one day there’s no space left. And I don’t mean space on the shelves; I mean in the apartment.
Sadly, my local Friends of the Library closed to donations at the start of the pandemic, along with the library itself, for obvious reasons. And since they operate out of the Central branch, which post-pandemic has discovered an urgent need for an earthquake retrofit, closed they remain. And I? Have a two-year backlog of books to rehome.
I’ve been boxing books to give to a second-hand bookstore that will come pick them up as long as there’s more than 100 titles. Not a problem. So I’m culling the shelves and making piles. Stacks in my office, stacks in the bedroom, a few in the living room. I pile them up in groups of four, then set an assembled cardboard box beside them and try to eyeball how many will fit. I’m always wrong. I might need more boxes.
The worst part is I look at my bookcases and can’t tell the difference because they’re almost entirely double-shelved, and I keep pulling donations from the books in the back. So the holes don’t show.
These books I’m giving away… I remember buying them all. I just don’t always remember why I thought I should.
Once upon a time, I could remember everything. The upcoming dentist appointment, when my homework assignments were due, rehearsal schedules for The Nutcracker, birthdays, phone numbers, you name it. Sure, I had a calendar for important things, but it was more of a failsafe than a tracking system. And I’d generally scribble homework down on a corner of my notes for the day, just in case. But mostly, it all got filed away in my brain. Back when it was youthful and elastic.
To be fair, as I’ve gotten older, life has become far more complex, and also far less visible. It’s easy to do your paperwork when it’s stacked on the corner of your desk; another thing entirely to remember what you’re doing when it’s buried in various corners of your hard drive. So eventually the calendar became virtual and synched to my phone. I tested a bunch of to-do list apps. Created folders within my assorted inboxes. Learned to embrace digital reminders. But the more systems I adopted, the more it felt like my life was all over the place.
Recently I started reading Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential, and much of it has meshed really well with something I’ve begun to suspect: My life runs in too many directions at once for my brain to keep track of everything, including the many resources I’m using to keep all those balls in the air. There has to be a way to streamline, to organize, to offload all of this stuff, without losing it or going crazy in the process.
Forte’s book outlines an extremely adaptable system for taking all those things that cross your mind or your desk over the course of the day and putting them in a central hub—a second brain, if you will. If the brain in your head can think it, your second, digital brain, can store it in a searchable format that allows you to go on with your day, secure in the knowledge that you can find the thing again when you need it. He suggests a work flow that involves a few types of apps—for taking notes, organizing tidbits you’ve read or heard or watched, tracking repetitive tasks, and organizing data for projects, etc. But the apps themselves aren’t important; he offers up potential suggestions for each purpose, but stresses the best choices are the ones you’re comfortable with and will use.
There’s been so much backlash against “hustle culture” and “toxic productivity” in recent months, whether as a result of worldwide burnout or because pandemic life made many of us take a second look at how we were structuring our days. What I found was the pandemic left me wanting to redefine everything: how I tackle my job, the types of other projects I take on, and how I want my life to feel on a very visceral level. And that meant figuring out what I was working with—all the things on my plate—and that required a better system of organization.
And so I’ve started to build a second brain. One that houses everything I need to know for agency work, personal projects, family information, health records and resources, finances, home upkeep, travel plans, all types of research, and whatever else comes along. It’s in the early stages, but that’s fine. I will add things as they come up.
One of my favorite books as a child was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. For anyone unfamiliar, it’s the story of a young sister and brother who run away from their Connecticut suburb to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (Go read it if you didn’t as a kid; and apologies for spoilers.) One of the less colorful parts of the book is the one that actually gives us the title: the children meet the woman who donated a marble statue of an angel to the museum, intent on discovering if the unknown sculptor was actually Michelangelo. Mrs. Frankweiler invites them to go through her files in search of potential clues, but the files themselves are seemingly endless and the task daunting.
I had a very specific mental image to go with that scene back when I first read the book, and I’ve thought of it periodically over the years, whenever I was clipping an interesting article from a magazine or searching for the manual for some piece of tech. Adventures and eccentricities aside, I think Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler could have used a second brain.
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A few more links to share:
How Do Algorithms Help (and Hinder) Book Sales? - A marketer and writer shares her knowledge from both sides of the desk.
How do you organize your books? 9 authors share their favorite shelves. - I’m always curious to see how people sort and display their book collections, and I know I’m not alone in this.
Announcing the Shortlist for the Inaugural Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction. - Big book awards have their pros and cons, but this one seems to have an intriguing selection for their shortlist this first time around. Worth a look.
The Thrill of Fear: Felicity Hannah talks to Neil Gaiman - An interesting interview about types of fear from one of the masters.
Justice Dept. and Penguin Random House’s sparring over merger has begun. - The question of whether PRH should be able to acquire S&S has hit the courts. In this case, the burden of proof is on the side of the DOJ as to whether this joining of publishing powerhouses would give PRH a true monopoly on the industry.
A Love Letter to (Perpetually Underfunded, Gloriously Democratic) Public Libraries. - Pretty much as described. And because I’m always a cheerleader for public libraries.
The Slightly Foxed Podcast, Episode 42: Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure. - This most recent episode of my favorite literary podcast features a discussion of Patrick Leigh Fermor, as well as other authors who wrote about walking and wandering and travel. A lovely summery pick, whether you’re living through the summer or just dreaming of it.
Currently in my teacup:
Harney & Sons Tropical Green (iced, in a glass, because August in SoCal)
Currently on my nightstand:
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
That’s all I have for now. Thank you for reading. Please do comment on anything that strikes your fancy. I love hearing what you think, what you’re reading, and how you’re all doing. Until next time.🥰
Dear Nephele: Thank you. I read so much that I must read, and write so much and clean all of that up, your newsletter is strictly a joy. I hope you do not mind, I want to share it with my readers on my Facebook group Drink Tea and Read Books. I would like my readers to be your readers. Cheers, Jacqueline Gillam Fairchild
Oh, the choice of which books to keep! When I moved from Cape Cod to Boston last year, I felt doubly challenged because my husband also is an avid reader. What’s more, we had inherited my parents’ book collection, which meant downsizing for four people. Some of their books dated from the 30s and 40s. My mother knew both John Hersey and Dwight Macdonald and their autographed books went into a special Definitely Keep pile. My parents maintained two full shelves on Russia, mostly history books related to research they had done for Private World of the Last Tsar, but other stuff too. I discovered an interesting quasi-memoir written in 1969 by Arthur Miller about his trip to Russia. My husband is a historian, so his books were history. Mine were mostly novels. We made our selection and packed up the boxes. Around a dozen, for us, marked Arlington, and a dozen for the Robbins library. Unfortunately, the library only accepts one box per month and prefers recently published books. A number of those boxes remained in the basement all year. Then, I noticed a metal container at the local gas station, labeled Books. So, that’s where many of them ended up.
Thanks for the recommendation on the book by Konigsburg. I will track it down for my granddaughter. Just checked. Arlington has two copies and both are out! Alexandra