Yesterday was off and on rain, and today looks to be the same, though temperatures will be slightly warmer than Saturday's chill. Between showers I did manage to mow the front grass and do a bit of weeding and deadheading, and maybe this afternoon I'll have a brief chance to work outside again. Or maybe not. Clearly this will not be a weekend for getting big jobs accomplished but for puttering from one occupation to another as weather and whim allow.

So I'll keep working on poem drafts, keep reading the Oates novel, keep weeding out the bookshelves in the dining room. Before we moved to Portland I radically reduced my book collection. Then, during Covid, my bored son did another deep cut. But here I am again, with too many books for the shelves.

So I am trying, on this go-round, to be honest with myself. Dawn, I said, do you even like eighteenth-century novels? Well, no, I do not. Old poetry: yes, I wallow in that. Proto-novels, not so much. I do not want to reread The Mysteries of Udolpho or Clarissa or Joseph Andrews or Tristram Shandy. I am bored by their bagginess; they are not what I love about fiction. Yet decade after decade I've clung to those volumes, I suppose because of some residual English-major guilt. No more. Goodbye, Fanny Burney. I'm sorry, but I cannot read your book.

There's no doubt: I feel wicked, and also like a failure, when I admit my reading limitations. Also, I think I ought to want to treasure the early women writers. Somehow it was easier, on early go-rounds, to rip the Carlyle and Ruskin volumes off the shelf. Those high-toned Victorian guys: they had more than enough adulation in their lives; they can take a little flippancy after death. But I hate to disappoint the women.

Still, in this little house I don't have space for endless sentimental guilt. There's simply no room for more bookshelves. And so, with sorrow, adieu.