"The Government says you can go back to your workplace now," my mother announced triumphantly a fortnight ago. She waved reproachfully at the fortress of literature that our desk had vanished behind. "So you can take all these books back to the office."

One of the things I had not counted on, when I embarked on my year of working from home, was that I would have to process and store the hundreds of books that The Straits Times (ST) receives for review within the constraints of my domestic realm.