Where Shelf Goblin Actually Came From

We moved most of our stuff out of that apartment in one long Saturday, me and Colby and two of his coworkers who owed him a favor, and by the third trip down to the truck he’d stopped even pretending to be surprised by how many boxes were just books and games. I’d labeled them by weight class instead of by room, which in hindsight was not a helpful system for anyone but me, and half the labels just said HEAVY, DON’T DROP, or BOOKS AGAIN. Somewhere around box eleven or twelve, hauling something heavy enough that neither of us could talk much, stairwell narrow enough that we had to angle the box sideways past the second-floor landing, he finally said it. You’re not a person who owns books and games, you’re a shelf goblin, you just accumulate and hoard and occasionally emerge to defend your hoard to strangers online.

I was annoyed for about as long as it took to get that box down the stairs. Then I started laughing, hard enough that I had to set my end down for a second, because it was true, and because it was exactly the kind of thing only someone who’d lived with me for two years would know to say. He wasn’t wrong about the hoarding part. He also wasn’t wrong that I’d absolutely get defensive about any of it if a stranger implied my collection was too big or my taste was bad. One of his coworkers, who didn’t know either of us well enough yet to have an opinion, just kept carrying boxes and let us have the moment.

Colby moved out of state not too long after that, a job thing, nothing dramatic, and we don’t talk as often as either of us probably should. But he still texts me every time a new Kickstarter looks like something I’d fall for, usually with some variation of the same joke attached. When I finally registered this site, the name wasn’t really a decision so much as an inevitability that had been sitting around waiting since that Saturday on the stairs.

I don’t know if he’s ever actually read anything I’ve posted here. I like to think the domain alone would make him laugh if he ever stumbled onto it.

Looking back at it now, I think what made the joke land wasn’t just the accuracy of it, it was that Colby said it while doing me a favor, hauling my own hoard down three flights of stairs on a Saturday he could’ve spent doing literally anything else. There’s a version of that same joke that would’ve felt genuinely mean coming from someone who resented the books and games taking up half our shared closet space for two years. From him it felt more like an inside joke about something we’d both lived with, which is probably the only way a nickname like that actually sticks instead of just stinging.

I still keep the running spreadsheet the same way I did when we lived together, and every so often, usually when I’m updating it after a bad Kickstarter month, I’ll catch myself thinking of the collection in his terms instead of my own, less like a library and more like a hoard I’m periodically obligated to defend. I don’t think that’s a bad way to think about it, honestly. It keeps me a little more honest about what I actually finish reading versus what I’m just accumulating for the shelf. Colby doesn’t know he handed me a permanent editorial conscience along with a domain name, and I’m not sure I’d tell him even if he asked.