The biggest advantage to cataloging all the books in your house and having these books show up in random combinations in the sidebar of your blog is that it dampens the urge to acquire still more: look at all these books you haven't gotten around to reading yet. Listing all the hardback purchases you've yet to read, and starring the ones you actually paid new-book prices on dribbles on your flame to purchase as well: oh, the shame. Aren't most of those purchases out in paperback now? Or languishing on library shelves? And attempting to house many more of the books brought into the study for cataloging purposes in said study via stacking and double-shelving so that the books won't have to be moved yet again next summer when the kids' long-overdue room exchange takes place means taking a clear-eyed appraisal of what you're actually likely to read over the next several months so that you can keep them handy: any new purchases will bump the old into obscurity and then you'll never find anything.

Also, any book not purchased makes a trip back to Utah that much more affordable.

Still, three books being published next year seem destined for purchase: Emma Richler's Feed My Dear Dogs; Peter Rushforth's A Dead Language; and Anne Tyler's Digging to America.

The flame's been dampened, but not put out.