Everything {Bookish} in Moderation

I don't know about you, but when it comes to Elise and books (and food, but that's another post entirely), the phrase Everything in moderation certainly applies.

I have to moderate my {personal} book stacks once in awhile every few weeks, or else I may go mad.

Because I read suggestions from trusted friends, use some birthday money to buy one (okay, four) secondhand, place the rest on hold at the library, and suddenly they all come at once and I've got stacks towers of books on nightstand and squashed in the space between cubby and shelf on my desk, and I'm overwhelmed.

Especially when I have more than one parenting/mothering/homeschooling book going at the same time... all inspiring and convicting, but covering such a variety of struggling areas that I can literally feel the clutter of too many ideas and issues and dramas slugging it out in my heart and mind; then I know I've got too much on my bookish plate.

(It's really sad when a collector of bookmarks such as myself has so many books going at once that she has to resort to using her youngest child's hospital bracelet to mark her place since the real ones are all in use. Honestly, Elise.)

Too, as a home schooling mama, I've got to be careful to leave some space up there for the reading we do all day. There's a fine, fuzzy line between maxing out four library cards with children's books to fill bins on hearth and in bedrooms, and maxing out brain capacity with multiple fictions and mothering helps and devotionals and teacherish manuals. Not to mention daily meal time read-alouds.

There is a time and season for everything, and the time for having the freedom to keep multiple books in multiple genres rotating on nightstand and desk is not now. I know it will come someday, but I forget in the excitement of a new book suggestion, and the lure of being moved emotionally by something other than Farmer Boy. (Not to demean at all- I cry at some point during every Little House book. Just sayin'.)

But every few weeks, my books and I, we come to a head. And they try to look all pretty and enticing and my beautiful desk is made even more so by the colorful, rich stacks on it's surface, and my nightstand bookshelf and lamp collect dust but the books never do, and I stand with hands on hips and try to look ruthless but they know I'm weak...

So I close my eyes for a moment, and remember this is a season, and we will meet again, take a deep breath and begin to stack up books for library return and a trip down to the family room bookshelves. But not all of them.

I choose one fiction, one mothering ministry, one devotional, and one teacherish.

It works for me. The fiction stays at my bedside, the mothering ministry follows me everywhere, the devotional sits on the mantel beneath my Bible, and the teacherish at my desk.

Here's what I am {happily} left with for now:

Fiction: Katherine, by Anya Seton (until my pre-order of the newest Mitford book arrives!)

Mothering: Seasons of a Mother's Heart, by Sally Clarkson (for the fourth time. It's wonderful.)

Devotional: Discipline: The Glad Surrender, by Elisabeth Elliot

Teacherish: Real Learning, by Elizabeth Foss (sidenote: When this book first arrived, I tried to read it in bed for a few nights, and just couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting sleepy! Reading always makes me sleepy. I grabbed a fiction book out of desperation after a late hour of Real Learning, and literally fell asleep within minutes. So this one is a read-while-the-children-are-quietly-working-on-math book. Guaranteed to keep you thinking! Love her heart, love her wisdom.)

So, goodbye to this...

...and hello to moderation.

For a few weeks, anyway.