First off: Kiri, you did it! You found a way to bring your books home and make room for them in your life, and that's wonderful.
Joless, I can speak to that feeling of "I'm the person who . . . ."
A few years back I was diagnosed with a visual impairment that gives me a 30% chance of developing a particular form of glaucoma. I visit a specialist twice a year and have had to give up any sort of impact exercise and driving at night, which is annoying. The most noticeable day-to-day effect is that I need to be able to resize text and alter contrast levels when I'm reading.
Recently a woman of my acquaintance said that she secretly sneers at homes where there aren't many books on the shelves; I politely said that my options were converting my personal library to electronic forms as far as possible or not reading much at all, and that she was excused from visiting me in future. There is a legendary comment thread at "Smart Bitches, Trashy Books" in which a rather obnoxious person is schooled about the lack of large-print editions for entirely too many books, and the cost of converting one's paper library to large-print.
I miss my books. I do. I miss that immediate sense of recognition when someone new walks in, scans my shelves and their face lights up. It hurts me to think that someone would assume that I am uneducated or lack curiosity about the world because I have more ornaments than books on the built-in shelves (I also hate dusting: it is far easier to clean the living room with the shinies in glass-front bookcases).
But I would miss the stories more.
So I have a Nook (waves Kaylee at the screen), and I have Shakespeare and Tolkien and Conan Doyle and Adams -- and all of Diane Duane's Trek novels because it makes me laugh uproariously to read them on a Nook, and Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate, and my friends' novels, and . . . .
My point -- which I knew was around here somewhere -- is that you never know when circumstances are going to force you to change your internal image of who you are. If you can make the choice voluntarily, with a glad heart, it's always easier.
