Oh my aching back but I love them!

Books...books everywhere, hundreds, no thousands of books around the house.  And the garage, oh my Lord there are cases and cases of books waiting to be sorted.

I am a great reader, my wife used to be and my daughter is, sort of.  The consequence of two college English majors and a youngster we have read to and in front of her entire life are a plethora of books about all sorts of things. My 30 year old daughter seems to have finally caught the disease as well.

Mom's home away from home

I like the feel of a book in my hands.  Some of the volumes we own are 100+ years old and quite a bit more, as well.  Books are my friends and I inherited that from my Mom--who used the local library sometimes three times a week and read and read and read.

Since I've been married, we have never had the luxury of a library close to us and for many years, we lived far closer to book stores than any library so we bought books, instead of borrowing them.  Garage Sales and thrift stores have been a significant part of our life, too--when we ebayed heavily, those were sources of a lot of what we sold.  Of course, books are in those places, too...so, 25 cents here and 50 cents there--more books!

The house we live in now has lots of windows...some floor to ceiling.  That was a choice.  We're light freaks.  Unfortunately, that left a greatly reduced space for bookshelves and artwork that we own.  And of course, we needed to choose. Sigh. I like the looks of walls covered with books but I like our art, too.

So we own enough books to open a bookstore.  We've thought about it.  But some will find their way, soon, on Ebay.  Others will end up at school libraries.  Still others will come in the house to join their mates and I've actually found more space for bookshelves (smile).

I trust that reading books will never go out of style.  I've read that Apple is trying to incorporate their Ipad into schools' curricula as a replacement for textbooks---I can't imagine how expensive that would be for school districts.  Just the thought of youngsters all running around with an Ipad in their backpacks, being thrown on the ground, left out in the rain and eaten by the dog scares me. Then there is the cost of buying the textbooks--probably new ones every year.  I don't think that will catch on real well with the 99%.  Apple is far too enamored with their company to allow any book vendor  to market their wares to another operating system.  Better another type of reader that has an open source for its operating system.  It would be cheaper in the long run.

Apple Ipad

I can see, however, how useful a tablet of some sort could be for college students.  I have carried those tomes, much to my back's dismay, many miles going to and from class burdened by the weight of books that cost 100 dollars or more each!  Not sure how a "poor" student (isn't that the description of most of them?)  is going to be able to buy a "used" textbook to save money, though.

I love my books.  I like the weight of them and the need to use bookmarks.  Even my textbooks are near and dear to my heart--some I reach for over and over.  The dog-eared paperbacks have a personality-especially those few that I read again and again.  The hardbacks look stately on the shelves and I'm thoroughly full of myself because I know I've read all of them.

Wanna dust these?

Unfortunately, where we live, every book we have displayed on our shelves sports a layer of dust and not for lack of cleaning.  Between the wood stove, acres and acres of fields around us and living in what I sometimes think is the windiest spot on earth (Chicago doesn't hold a candle to where we live), dust seeps into our old farmhouse and settles everywhere (remember I said we have lots of windows). Dusting each one of the while dusting the furniture would be a bit of a chore.

As I go through the books in the garage, most of which will be moved soon to a new storage area, I'm making a discovery-again.  Boxes of books weigh a ton!  I'm wondering if perhaps the bookstore might just be a grand idea!  I don't want to have to move them too very often more.  And I think of how many boxes of BOOKS I shipped from the Boston area to Oregon when I moved and then, like rabbits, they multiplied (the books must have read the Bible, "be ye fruitful and multiply."). We've moved many times in our married life and our books all came with us.  Oh my aching back.



And right now, I'm thinking I probably should buy a Kindle.  In fact, I have one picked out.