Thursday, September 21, 2006

So What’s In Your Library?

During my one foray into graduate school, my professor was always talking about his friend, Jay Parini. That’s the only reason I have a clue about the identity of the person who wrote Other People’s Books, which I found through Blog of a Bookslut.

Reading Other People’s Books made me think about my own library, of course. When I was young, I planned to have my own library some day, and I bought some Nancy Drew books to get it started. Now that I've been taking care of books for more than a few years, I’m not quite so serious a collector. I’ve noticed that books turn brown and start to smell of mildew after a while. At least mine do. I know someone who likes that smell, but, personally, I don't see the attraction.

Now I tend to worry about what my children will think of me if they find certain books among my possessions after I go on to that great reading room in the sky. That’s the reason I got rid of a paperback set of vampire books that I thought might be close to being soft-core porn. My heirs didn't need to see those things and start wondering about their mom.

What got me started on this? Oh, yeah. Jay Parini's description of his decent set of Kipling.

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