It's always been the best of times...

It wasn't until after nearly a full year of having lived together that our respective book collections finally met. And from that moment, the shelf space just hasn't been able to keep up with the additions.

We've certainly done our best to keep pace, though. Whether it was buying two bookcases out of the the storage locker of a former-professor-turned-fringe-Massachusetts-congressional-candidate, or re-purposing an old hardware-store paint-display shelf to accommodate our growing collection, we've made sure our books have a home.

That home has been in Massachusetts -- where we did some serious damage via the Northampton DPW's book shack -- and is now in Charlottesville, Va., where, due to the great number of quality booksellers dealing in used books, it is very easy for one to always be in "add mode."

The "Get A Spine" blog chronicles our search for used classic literature (novels, mostly) -- as well as the places we go in our search -- to add to our personal library.

Everyone's definition of "classic" differs, and so we won't presume that ours is the definition. For us, both born after 1975, it almost always (but not exclusively) means anything written pre-1960, and our search generally limits our scope to any edition of a work published before 1970 ... and we really love finding anything published before 1930. And love even more pre-1900, and so on, and so on. We're not after first editions, but we certainly don't ignore them if they're attainable, but our goal is to build our library economically.

We believe foremost that great works of literature are a supreme form of art, but we also strongly believe that a book, in its physical form, can often be a work of art. Of course, the degree to which it is considered "art" is subjective. For us, if something grabs us visually, we're likely to add it to our collection ... even if we have several other editions of the same work. We definitely have our repeats, as this blog will prove.

This blog is intended to be as much about the adventure as it is the acquisition. It is the moments of discovery, of surprise, and of joy that often accompany an outing in search of used classics that create a full story, and give the book a life of its own -- by the memories associated with it -- once it's in our house. And we view our collection as something to one day be passed along to our daughter, who we hope will have the same love of books and literature that we do.

Last, but certainly not least, while "the look" of a book is important to us, we believe the books we collect should be read. Our library is not a museum, and we don't want to live in a world where actual books are only display pieces.