It Takes One to Know One

Remember this post? Well, the precious library has finally come into my possession.

Thirty. Boxes. Of. Books. (Be still my heart!)

When a colleague inquired how I had spent my weekend, I informed hir that I had spent it sorting through my new library (does it stay in my apartment or get moved to my office? do I already have a copy of this? which edition is this? what subject classifications should I use to organize them?) and briefly recapped how it had come into my possession.

After all of my experiences throughout grad school of people failing to understand why I love books as much as I do, I lamely added that I realized that I hadn't had a particularly exciting weekend, but I was interrupted by Colleague's reaction:

"Wait! You inherited the library of a scholar in your exact area of specialty? And you got the whole library?!? This colleague was older than you, right? So, that means that there must be books in the library that are out of print!! That's incredible!"

Colleague was almost as excited as I was about this inheritance.

And as I looked at Colleague, remembering that s/he, too, was a young professor with hopes of someday becoming a Real Scholar, I realized hir empathy was rooted in one simple fact:

Birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together.