B is for My Books . . . My Treasures

If you were to come to see me, it wouldn’t take you long to decide for yourself that I love books. I’m sure that between my husband, Frank, and me, we have thousands of books of one kind or another. Every room in our house, including the bathrooms, have books and/or magazines, but mostly books. Let me kntroduce you to our very much unorganized “library.”

I was an English teacher for 32 years and a consultant/sales representative for a publishing company for 21 years; therefore, I have a few textbooks left from those professions. I’m officially retired, but I just couldn’t get rid of all of the books that I either taught from or sold and inserviced. When I took two van loads of textbooks to the dumpster last summer, my heart hurt. Teachers and homeschool moms don’t want old textbooks, so I had to throw them away. But a few books had to stay with me for memories.

I love to write, so I have many books about writing and grammar. I was one of those strange English teachers who loved teaching grammar even more than teaching literature. So I collect books on grammar and writing, especially ones with strange titles like Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meaniesand Spunk and Biteand The Elephants of Style. Have I read all of my peculiar books? Goodness, no . . . I read fromthem, just a chapter here and a page there. I use the writing books to help me improve my writing. I know that sounds strange for a retired English teacher, but I never had a writing course, so I’m teaching myself now instead of teaching students.

At one time, I was doing some editing and proofreading work with a friend, so I ordered books that I thought would help me in my new endeavor: The Writer’s Manual of Style, Mark My Words, The Copyeditor’s Handbook, The Elements of Editing. I worked with her for a few months, but I found that editing and proofreading weren’t my true loved. Too much like grading papers, but I didn’t even know the people who wrote the books and articles that I was “grading,” so I couldn’t make funny remarks to them about their writing. But I couldn’t get rid of the books.

Frank and I love fiction, especially mysteries and thrillers. So . . . we have complete collections of novels by Lee Child, Harlan Coben, and Vince Flynn. I know we should take them to Book Mountain in Santa Fe or to Cerrillos Station in the Village of Cerrillos, but both of us are reluctant to part with these paperbacks that we have enjoyed so much. We may give the Jack Reacher novels (Lee Child) to Frank’s brother Jim, who just sits and ready and watches TV all the time. He’d enjoy them!

I have a collection of books written by friends, too. Some are very good; some not so good, but I want to have them anyway. Those friends are an encouragement to me. My best friend in high school is a much-published author, and I’ve read most of her books. My problem with them is that they’re so much connected to her denomination that they’re a bit difficult for me to read. I don’t understand all of the terminology. When we were teenagers, our favorite thing to do when we spent Friday nights at each other’s houses was for her to write about her favorite characters, Tony and Tricia, and for me to read right along with her as she wrote. My favorite book by a friend is by a Jewish man. The title is Finding Home: An Immigrant’s Journey. It tells of his living in Israel when he was a boy and the hardships that he and his family endured. Then he tells of his move to the United States, the home that he finally found. Both Frank and I loved Avi Shama’s book!

We also have collections of college textbooks, mainly Bible study books and other books of a religious nature. Frank orders books on politics, and I order any books that I think I might like to read: novels, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies. We also have bookshelves of old books, some of which might be worth something someday, and bookshelves of just a jumble of various kinds of books.

I think you can see that we love books. We passed our love on to our daughter in a way. She reads mostly nonfiction . . . nothing that can be bought at the grocery store. Our son read music magazines, but he did read one book, and he was so proud of himself: Charlotte’s Web!

Here are a few more bookshelves:

Reference books . . . no one uses encyclopedias now, but we just can’t get rid of ours. We bought the set of Encyclopedia Brittanica when we first married and had practically no money.

Our Great Books of the Western World are precious to us for the same reason – very little money, but our hearts were in books.

Our guest room wouldn’t be complete without a collection of books that we think our friends and relatives might like:

And then there’s my messy bookshelf full of all sorts of books that I’ve read and not read:

And Frank’s neat bookshelf . . . most of which he’s read.

In Frank’s office, there’s also a wall of books, most of which I wrote for other people: my students, students who traveled with us in Europe, friends, Corey, all sorts of books. All of them were printed here at home and bound at Kinko’s. Very professional, huh?

And finally . . . there are the three books that I wrote and Wendy published either through Blurb or Lulu. Married to My Hero is the book that I wrote for Frank on our 50^thAnniversary. Memories is a collection of stories about my cousins and me. And My Mom’s Always Hot! is the book that I wrote about our son, Jay, who died almost 26 years ago, when he was only 24. These books would never be best sellers, but they are books that are full of my heart and may just be the books that I treasure the most.