February 16, 2015

There's a Book for Every Day of the Year at My House

I have more than one book shelf in my house and on each everyone is lined up a bevy of books that I cherish as treasures.  And I intend to read them all one day.

Yes, that is my goal, lofty as it may sound.  Yet reasonable, don't you think?  

Some of my books are favorites that I read over and again.  Others are there for reference (as in knitting books, quotations, bird identifiers, and other gems of information.)  Still others are favorite works of fiction that take me away when the need arises.  Always there is something to pull from my library shelf when I feel the urge to read one.

Yet others are priceless treasures that I consider my forever friends:  365 Bedtime Stories, that my mother read from to settle her youngsters in to bed every night (and my favorite story in that tome, the one where the little girl habitually loses one of her mittens, well that one hits far to close to home with me.....), Penrod, by Booth Tarkington, filled with tales of a young lad and his adventures and one of my father's favorite childhood reads, The Secret World of Og, the tale of an underground adventure that I personally checked out and read from my hometown library no less than 6 times as a child.  

Yes, books can be friends and comforters.  I have been associated with them my entire life and can tell you the very first story that I read aloud to my proud parents at the early age of six.  It's just that important to me.

Perhaps that is why, when my parents recently dispersed and distributed many of the books in their vast library, I became the proud owner of yet more books for my shelves.  (Hey, I may just be in the market for another book shelf if anyone has a spare!)

Some of the new items to my library include a family Bible, an aged family cookbook with hand written recipes from my grandmother, Dad's own copy of the famed Penrod (guess I'll be reading that one shortly!), several area history books, a few elementary primers, and my dad's holy grail:  Small Wonder, the Amazing Story of the Volkswagen.  

What  more could I ask for?  Granted I had to leave behind the set of Time Life Old West set of books and a plethora of other interesting volumes, yet with me came a little piece of the heart of that library.  And I will cherish it for years to come.