I became aware a couple of weeks ago that Dr. Jekyll (and, along with him, Mr. Hyde) appeared in the new Mummy movie.  I have no interest in seeing that movie at all but it reminded me that I’ve never actually read the original book.

Wherever I was when that thought occurred to me, I mentally scanned my bookshelf and decided that I probably already owned a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but that I wasn’t sure.  Normally the idea that I don’t know if I own a book is very unusual, but in this case I had a decent reason: at some point several years ago those cheap Barnes and Noble classics editions went really cheap– like $2.50 a book– and I scooped up a ton of them on the assumption that I’d want to read them eventually.  I was pretty certain that DJ&MH was among that list, but I wasn’t sure.

This is a picture of some (yes, some) of the bookshelves in my living room, taken from the perspective of my recliner, which is where I spend a substantial proportion of my time when I’m at home, to the point where my son calls it “Daddy’s chair”:

Helpful pink arrows are indicating where the Barnes and Noble editions I was referring to are shelved.  You will note that some of them are behind a rocking chair and a few of the boy’s toys.  Those items were not put into those places for the purpose of this picture; that is where they generally live– meaning that my view of the shelf on the right was blocked from my recliner.  In addition, my eyes aren’t quite good enough anymore to resolve individual titles of the books on that shelf from my chair, although I knew the rough size and color of the spine so I was pretty sure it wasn’t in the bunch on the left.

It took two weeks for me to simultaneously 1) remember that I had been wondering if I had a copy of DJ&MH when I was actually in the house and 2) have the energy to get my lazy ass up out of my chair to go check those books on the right.  There were multiple occasions where the first happened and the second did not.  Multiple.

The answer was yes, by the way.