"Greetings from Finland!Kari's blog.
Most of the books in my bookshelf are in Finnish and on the most shelves they are in two rows; one behind another, so you can't see all of them in the picture. Some English, German and Swedish are there too.
Top right you can see Grolier's "The New Book of Knowledge" from the sixties. I bought it some years ago, when our library was selling away old (and never used) material."
Wow - I just read an essay last night that referenced The Book of Knowledge. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/river_teeth/v013/13.2.harvey.pdf
ReplyDeleteI too grew up in a household where the multi-volume Book of Knowledge held a prominent place. That was 50 years ago; I stiill remember the binding of the books.
DeleteThe only books on my shelves are ones I want to read over & over...
ReplyDeleteCould you please remind me how to upload pix for you? Next somewhat sunny day, I take pix of my shelves. Thanks much!
Right sidebar, in the "about me" paragraph. If you're not a relative we'll place you in the "old friend" category.
DeleteYeah, I probably have some books that will never get read, some that will get read once, and many, many that will get used time and again, and usually in different ways. Some will be "tasted," some will be mined, some will be explored more than once with a different purpose in mind each time. Over the years, I've been a book designer, a writer, an occasional illustrator, a 3-D artist in various media, and having a wide-ranging library (and a mental card catalog) has been invaluable.
ReplyDeleteAnd I've been as hungry for learning as our genial host here... and one should never stop learning, because you will often find a missed fact, or a series of sources that combine to give a new perspective on something you might have assumed immutable. Damn the floor joists! You can never have too many books. (Oh, perhaps, should they fall and crush you...)
Tip for those of you near a Half-Price Books: check the dumpsters out back! (But don't carry stuff home that you know won't enrich your life just because it's there.)
Very interesting the number of "series" type books involved here. Curious about the small, 2-5 volume per set kinds of things...what sorts of books are those?
ReplyDeleteSurely I'm not the only one who has used encyclopedias for pleasure reading? I've always enjoyed pulling out a volume, opening it to an arbitrary page, and learning about cephalopods or the London Spectacle Makers' Company. One thing physical reading has over digital reading is that it's easier to dive into something at random. Most digital libraries and search engines assume you have at least a vague destination in mind when you begin .
ReplyDelete