Just as experts in the field of science and (weightology) inform us that the insects inhabiting our globe are so many trillions of times more numerous than mammals like humans that their collective weight outdistances that of other creatures, I sometimes muse to myself that surely given the number of publications, books, magazines, new and vintage that find shelter in our house must surely challenge the furniture for weight.

We are omnivorous readers, we just are smitten with the printed word and language and stories and history and all that makes reading so eminently worthwhile in entertaining and educating ourselves and spending our time usefully engrossed in the written word. The result of that is we have become, over the years, bibliophiles and bookrats. And of course the corollary to that is the inevitable; our home is packed with books.

From time to time we resolve to make a sad and sorry effort to discard the lesser varieties of books that we've read. Not from generosity of spirit, necessarily, with the thought of 'sharing' them with others of the reading public, but for the same reason a drowning person will attempt to reach the surface of a lake, to breathe. So occasionally we make a stab at winnowing the occasional bit of printed matter and taking bags along to thrift shops to place on their shelves for sale to the public at giveaway prices. Which is, incidentally, where we also acquire a good many of our own books.

It's somewhat like pulling teeth though, you'd do anything to avoid the dreaded event. So we scrutinize very, very carefully what we're (un)willing to part with. Second-take titles and authors, reconsider, and in the end cannot bear to part with some, while hardening ourselves from the wish to 'save' more of their number and end up 'sacrificing' them to the alter of tidying up and removing some of the weight their numbers impose on this poor house.

Still, there are times when our personal library comes up short, and we venture to our area public library for titles of specific authors not in our collection. As did my husband yesterday when he went along to our much-frequented branch of our fair city's public library. It's large, with ample shelving. And it's yet another source where we acquire books the library de-commissions, and there's even a separate space there, a room given over to donated books operated by 'Friends of the Library', where shelves groaning with books are sold for $1 apiece, some exciting titles and a lot of dross.

So, on yesterday's library visit my husband searched on the shelves for some of the celebrated works of Ernest Hemingway, a man whose writing altered completely the structure of modern writing, known for his outstanding novels, and in his earlier days a journalist. None on any of the shelves. Not listed in the card catalogue. Something clearly amiss. He looked to see what was available on the shelves of classic literature; sparse to completely absent. At the desk, speaking to a librarian, a confused look met his enquiry. Never heard of him; what's the name again?

A librarian unfamiliar with the Hemingway name. She obligingly checked other branches' inventories and a few disparate titles came up at several for Hemingway. She offered to order any of them in for my husband to pick up. We're still trying to digest the reality that someone who graduated from an academic library sciences course to quality for employment as a librarian had no idea whatever who Hemingway was, a total mystery to her -- and that libraries in our area are bereft of his immortal works.