While procrastinating from surely more pressing projects, I decided to alphabetize my books. I have many books, too many, including not a few volumes I'll likely never read, but I've never felt that I've had a “library.” That's the sort of thing that I imagine requiring a great mansion built by a Morgan or a little temple endowed by a Carnegie (as is, I have to keep my books in my office—an editor's salary can buy an apartment big enough for himself or his books, not both).
Well, maybe it's not so difficult. After alphabetizing them (a dusty affair revealing that I had three copies each of The Habit of Being, The End of Ideology, and The Confessions of Zeno), I now feel that what was once a mass of objects is now a single whole, that a jumble of volumes has become a codex phalanx, that my books are now a library. In short, I am thoroughly pleased.
Matthew Schmitz is deputy editor of First Things.
