Books are Expensive, but...

This blog post is long but I am writing it mostly for my children so that when I am gone and they are emptying the house, they will understand why I have the books that I have and why they are special to me.

Books are expensive. I know that but I still buy them from time to time even though over the decades I have gotten rid of many of them. (Used book stores, estate sales, garage sales, and thrift stores are a wonderful resource for inexpensive and sometimes unique books.) When I was young, before I had to really study, and I discovered boys, I was a avid reader. I always had my nose in a book and a stack of books waiting to be read. I read most of the children’s books in our small town library. I could walk there by myself because it was just down the street and around the corner. But I was thrilled when my mother and I would travel to the LA area from time to time, and I could use my aunt’s library card to check out books from a much larger library.

My brother was home from college one day and he didn’t approve of me reading Nancy Drew mysteries. He found the current one that I was reading and he threw it up on the roof of our two story house. What he didn’t know was that there was a tree in the back yard next to the house and from time to time I would climb up the tree and sit on the roof. (I had four brothers and I was a bit of a tomboy as they said in those days.) I just climbed up on the roof, retrieved the book, and continued reading. He complained to my mother about it and she just said, “Well, you were the one who threw it up there!” The tree was behind the chimney that is on the right in this photo, right next to the house. You can just see a bit of it.

A photo of the Bishop Library where I spent time picking out books to read while I was growing up in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the building is still there. There is a bit of additional interest about this library. When I was a freshman in high school, and my future husband was a sophomore, we met there one day, and that was the start of our romance. I was in the children’s section and he walked up to me. He knew me because I had been dating his brother but we had just broken up. We started talking and I told him that I had read many of the books in that section. He started pulling out books to check the card (in those days you signed the card to check out a book) and he kept finding my name on the cards. He was quite impressed. And that was the very beginning of it all…

Among the books that I currently read I will admit to rereading light romance paperback books written by Betty Neels that I read many decades ago that I have downloaded from Amazon. I can finish reading them in a couple of hours or less, pure escapist reading from the current mess the world is in. (Do not turn your nose up, this is no worse than watching all that garbage reality tv that is on now!)

I looked back at the last five ebooks that I downloaded to read on my phone. They were: a contemporary romance written by Kristen Higgins; a non-fiction book called Man with a Hammer about the recent restoration of a mansion in England; a book written by the brilliant Pete Buttigieg called Shortest Way Home, I told my kids that he won’t be President in my lifetime but I pray that he will be in theirs; another contemporary romance by Kay Correll; and a book called The Heirloomist about family heirlooms and the stories that they can tell. The last five hard cover books that I purchased were: A House Restored by Lee McColgan about the restoration of a New England Colonial house; Los Angeles before the Freeways, a book about what Los Angeles looked like before freeways were built; The Magic of German Church records, because I have been working on my husband’s Germany ancestry recently; Second Nature, a Gardener’s Education, said to be a man’s meditation about his relationship to the earth; and a book that won a Pulitzer Prize called Master Slave Husband Wife: an Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom. Obviously my reading interests are not limited to one area.

I have a few small collections of different books. I keep my genealogical research books in my study. I had a much larger collection of them but I weeded them over the past two years because I needed the space for storage for containers for napkin rings and place card holders and those books were really out of date. I did keep a collection of them even though some are really outdated.

I also have my collection of African American genealogy and social history books in my study. This is a subject area that I have spent many many years doing research about and I continue to do research in that subject area. (I have a database of the names of 8,000 slaves who lived in Missouri that I gathered from doing research in the 1980’s and some of that data will be published online by American Ancestors in the next few years as a part of their 10 Million Names project.) I also have a book shelf full of books of quotations and phrases, can’t remember when that collection started although I liked to read poetry as a child sometimes.

I started my librarian career as a Children’s Librarian for a few years and I developed a love for children’s picture books that had beautiful full page illustrations. The children’s book illustrator Susan Jeffers was one of my favorite children’s book illustrators. These kinds of books are never cheap but I have a collection of them that started when I had my own children and I continue to add to it when I see something special that I really love. I especially look for children’s books with illustrations that cover the entire page.

I try to add a new Christmas picture book every Christmas season to my collection and I put them out on display then although some years there is not a new one that I can find that I really like. These children’s books are on the shelves in our guest room.

We have had built-in shelving built on the walls in our living room, family room, my study, and the guest room because we needed the space. In the living room, I have a shelf of gardening books and many of them are about Southern California gardening in the hopes that I will become a successful gardener. I do refer to them from time to time but my garden is mostly hardy geraniums, day lilies, and succulents that I can’t kill.

In the living room we have two sets of books for children that were in the house when I was growing up and I think one of the sets was in the house that my mother grew up in because it was published in 1921. I did read some of chapters in the books when I was young. I have kept them for sentimental reasons and because I love the way the vintage bindings on these books look together on the shelf.

I think my parents purchased this set for us because it was published in the 1930’s or 1940’s and my oldest brother was born in the early 1940’s.

Because I have been a collector of many things over the years, in the living room, I have a small reference library for information about them although most of the books are outdated now.

When I was in college taking classes for my B. A. Degree in Art History I developed an interest in architectural history, especially the history of residential buildings. I had always loved old houses and I really wanted to get a Master’s in Architectural History. Instead, I attended U.C.L.A. for a Master’s Degree in Library Science (more jobs were available in that field). One of the requirements for the Master’s Degree was a Master’s project, either a paper or a bibliography. I picked the bibliography and my chosen subject was Southern California Residential Architecture from 1850-1950. I had the most wonderful time for several months traveling around Southern California visiting libraries and archives looking for unusual books and periodical articles to add to my bibliography. As a result of that interest, I have collected books about architecture from time to time. I also developed an interest in social history and local history as a result of that project and also my interest in genealogy, and I have collected books in that subject area as well.

I have always loved the art of Norman Rockwell and for many years I collected books about him and his art including one called Willie was Different that was signed by him and his wife that my mother bought for me. As you can see here, other book subjects migrate into my subject collections, especially those that have not been looked at for a long long time. Because I was an Art History major, over the years I have owned many many art books and I still have several of them although I sold a lot of them many years ago.

My book collections in the family room are more varied, more architecture subjects, and some photographical essays as well. There tends to be a mixture of different books on the shelves in this room.

I like to support women authors when I can so I have small collections of those books. My son’s book The Richest Man in Babylon is also on this shelf although it should be on the shelf above this. Don’t I sound like a librarian organizing books!

Susan Branch is a wonderful artist and illustrator and her books are enchanting and so much fun to read. She hand writes all the letters and words as well as doing all the art work. In the photo before this one are four of her books and I really enjoy reading them. She lived on Martha’s Vineyard for many many years but she now lives in Central California near the coast.

This is the shelf for family members who have written books. My oldest brother is an author and I have copies of all of his books here. They are available on Amazon as is my son’s book that I mentioned above. My other son has an essay in the Proud to Be: Writings by American Warriors book on this shelf as well.

I have an interest in books written by people who love and write about special places old and new.

For many years our family room was decorated in red, white, and blue. We have moved beyond that but I still collect patriotic books for children that are well illustrated. Good ones are hard to find but I have several now.

We call them coffee table books and for good reason. A large coffee table with two shelves is the perfect spot to stack many large books. I have always insisted on having coffee tables with two shelves for that reason. This cheap second hand coffee table, purchased several years ago, was supposed to be a temporary place holder until we could find one that I really wanted. HA! My husband has used that trick before. I could tell you about our old cheap bedroom set purchased out of someone’s garage that my husband promised me would be replaced within six months. Thirty plus years later I finally got my solid wood Arts and Crafts style bedroom set… Anyway, back to the books, these are just a few of the books on this coffee table and there are others on the coffee table in the living room. They take up so much space but I love them and from time to time, another one sneaks in.

These aren’t all the books that we have, but some good examples. It wouldn’t be a home for me without my books.