I clearly should have been a...

...librarian!

When I lived at home, and my collection of books was significantly smaller than it is these days, they were always neatly categorised by genre and then sorted alphabetically. I have a secret ambition to do this as a grown up but we're clearly going to need a bigger house! I'd forgotten that there were a couple of additional steps I'd taken towards freakish organisation... This is where it gets a bit embarrassing.I've no idea how old I was when I made my own library cards for the books and I'd actually forgotten totally that I had. Given that the book is Enid Blyton's The Land of Far Beyond and that the handwriting is a bit on the careful side, I'd guess I was fairly young. I hope I was anyway! My mother and sister "kindly" provided the evidence which I have photographed for your viewing pleasure. Seeing this reminded me that I made borrowing envelopes for my family members and if anyone wanted to read one of my books then the card was assigned to their slot. Dear, dear me. I clearly had trust issues.
Seeing this book again triggered the memory that when I was in my teens I set up a card carousel with an index card for each author, again sorted alphabetically, with all the books I owned by them neatly listed. The picture above is not of mine but if I find it, I will be sure to share! I have absolutely no idea what possessed me to do this as I knew exactly what books by each author I had in my collection but I suspect I was very taken by the library's card file index. I wonder if other libraries still have those.

I was laughing again at my book issuing cards (why on earth did I use a biro to mark the lines on paper that's already lined??) but have just realised that I'm not actually cured of this obsession. You see, I recently asked Mr B if it was a bit odd that I wanted a barcode scanner so I could properly catalogue my collection. He felt it had shades of OCD but then what does he know?

Dear me - there's clearly no hope!