As an avid reader and writer of non-fiction and historical fiction I do LOTS of research. Of course, these days I do much of that research on the internet, but I have found again and again that books are still the best way to go so many times. While I am a big fan of ebooks and audio books for their convenience and portability, I find them of only limited use for my research. (It’s not uncommon for me to listen to a book, decide it’s going to be useful to me, and then order a paperback copy of it, so that I can underline and highlight it.)
Trying to Shrink the Library
As a result, my personal library contains thousands of titles. Before I retired from homeschooling our family library actually contained as many as 7,000 books. As my homeschooling was coming to an end, I tried to reduce the collection to just the books that I wanted to have around for my own enjoyment and education. Consequently, I think I’ve reduced it to somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 books.
A Monumental Task
Almost a month ago my oldest daughter, my youngest son, and I took on the project of changing out the shelves in the library from the built-in ones to matching bookcases. Today, after way too many hours of work, the final shelves went onto the new bookcases, and the process of re-shelving my book collection came closer to completion. (I would love to say that all of the 100+ boxes of books have been emptied, but we’re not quite that far along!)
Don’t worry – the empty spaces will be filled before we’re done!
How Would You Use Seven Bookcases?
As we were coming close to the end I had one of those “wow” moments. Early on in this process I had spent a couple of hours deciding the best way to utilize my seven new bookcases. I came up with the categories for each bookcase – Science/Bible, Government/Economics, Shakespeare/Writing/Education, Leonardo da Vinci/Art, World History, and last, but certainly not least, two bookcases for American History. (It’s not that American History is more important than World – I just happen to have more topics that I’ve studied within American History: the American Revolution, Presidents, Lewis and Clark, the Civil War, and Civil Rights, just to name some of them.)
My Favorite Topics – For Reading and Writing
Obviously, the fact that I could fill almost twenty linear feet with books on each of these main subjects gives an indication of where my interests lie. But it wasn’t until this weekend, when we were working on the American History shelves that it dawned on me – I have written one or more books on every one of those major subjects, as well as on the majority of the American History topics I’ve collected.
I guess that shouldn’t be a real surprise – I own books on these topics because they fascinate me. And that’s typically how I chose the topics for my writing projects. If I ever run out of book ideas on my “to do list” all I have to do is walk into my library and soak in some of the ideas that fill these shelves. It shouldn’t take long to find another interesting spark.
Happy reading, writing, and learning!
Cathy
