UNPACKING MY LIBRARY

A little more than a year ago, my wife and I were forced to decamp our digs in Pacific Palisades when our idiot landlady decided that she wanted to list our unit for sale smack in the middle of housing slump. (It sold last week, after 15 months of sitting empty.) We needed to make a quick move and we settled on a small place in Brentwood that was charming but, in hindsight, far too small for us. And so my library remained in the garage in boxes for the year that we lived there.

We returned...