Our Books

I read Mellie’s latest blog about how our house is filled with books and it made me smile.

http://thursday-ish.blogspot.com/

Some of the stories I read (and write) are a little fatalistic. I do wonder from time to time how we would cope if the lights went out. I mean really out. No electricity and no hope of it coming back for a long, long time.

While I was sitting at home eating lunch, casually pondering the end of days, I began to look around me and realized we don’t have a problem. I saw a book on soap making! Then it struck me, we absolutely do have a Library.

Want to know how to paint or draw? Yeah, we have books on that. How to write? Please! A whole section that’s just reference books. Books on aircraft? Check. Chemistry? History? Politics? Check. Space program…Mercury, Gemini, Apollo? Check. Cook books? Pshhht. And I haven’t even gotten to the fiction yet.

Like Shakespeare? We have them broken down by tragedies or comedies or you can borrow the complete collection in one volume if you prefer. I can eye Dickens to Tolstoy to Hemmingway to Twain. Historical fiction, science fiction, romance, mystery and just plain silliness (may Douglas Adams rest in peace, like a Vogon on Pan Galactic Gargleblasters doesn’t.)

I know in my heart that an iPad, or any electronic device like it, will never replace a book. There is something about how a book feels and even how it smells. I have a book in my desk at work. At home I have one by the bed, by the chair where I use the computer, and in my car. Some of you reading this know what I mean. I know you go to Walmart or Costco and you can’t resist cruising down the book isle. And you never get out of Borders or Barnes and Noble without buying something!

One of my best friends complimented me the other day by saying I was one of the smartest people they know. I don’t think I’m all that smart. I think I’m just well read. It’s part of the “using not only all of my own brains, but also all of the brains of those around me” idea. I have a house full of the brains of lots of smart people (and a few smart-alecky ones).