One of those things

[willk]

When browsing through one of those retirement lists, (Things you Should Downsize) one of the main items one should downsize (GET RID OF) our your books.

I remember reading John Adams biography as it related that one of his great pleasures as he aged was spending time with his books. While I am just 67 years young and am still very blessed with good health, I do look towards the times when I won't be be so blessed. When that time arrives and I am no longer able to enjoy the pleasures of youthful health I will have my books and my journal. The pleasure will then be reading and rereading my adventures and the adventures I dreamed of and the adventures of others.

We are a throw-away society. One of my undergraduate professors reminded us in class one day that in the end, our education is in our books, and when we sell back our books, we sell back our education, cheaply. I have not forgotten.

I look towards many hours with my wonderful little library. I cannot take it with me but then someone else can enjoy this archaic method of imparting knowledge. I hope they enjoy them as much as I have. I hope you enjoy yours as well

 

[contender]

I could not imaging a life w/o my books. In fact,, I recently built 2 of the planned 4 more bookcases for us here. (We did build an addition to the house,,, and Miss Penny said we needed the bookcases.) There was also a question on another gun forum about how many good gunsmithing books we owned. I replied; "A whole bunch,, a library full."
NOTHING takes away the pleasures of good reading!

 

[Jim Puke]

A good book, is a GREAT thing.

 

[JFB]

well not books, but my hand written notebooks for a 4 year BSME went into 4 large trash bags last month.

As for my collection of technical manuals, I can't give them away. for the younger engineers, if it is not digital it doesn't matter.

My gun library has been in storage for decades. If I get time I hope to sell it with the gun collection (also in storage) before an auctioner does. And I'll hope to make 60 latter this year.

 

[Rancher Will]

One of my pleasures for many years has been my personal library consisting of a few hundred books. It also saddens me to know that many Americans do not take advantage of convenient access to the books that would help to educate everyone to our responsibilities as good citizens. I know that there are magnificent libraries and book stores but for some generations now our school systems have failed to instill the love of learning.

 

[SamV]

I reluctantly give away books from time to time. My wife sets alimit on shelf space. She is an avid reader, but rarely saves a book. I save most, and often regret giving away a book that I enjoyed. I even have several hundred of my kid's favorites packed away. I loved reading to all my children when they were younger and never said no to a book they wanted. All four were honor students and I suspect that habit helped. OTOH, I do recall donating many books to charity. My children's grade school asked for library donations. I think we came up with about 700 books.

 

[Fox Mike]

I would rather spend time reading a book rather than watching useless TV. We have a saying here at the house that if we are down to only two library books we have reached the 'critical' level. I honestly cannot remember the last time that Linda and I didn't have a book 'working'. Ya can't have too many books!

 

[Colonialgirl]

I could not imaging a life w/o my books. In fact,, I recently built 2 of the planned 4 more bookcases for us here. (We did build an addition to the house,,, and Miss Penny said we needed the bookcases.) There was also a question on another gun forum about how many good gunsmithing books we owned. I replied; "A whole bunch,, a library full."
NOTHING takes away the pleasures of good reading!

OH NO !! Not down in your new ARMS ROOM I hope !!

 

[Colonialgirl]

I STILL have book from long ago called "From IFS to BITS" about short cuts in Fortran IV programming and how to do it on the old IBM 129 Key punch cards. When I took the course, we got to use that NEW FAST IBM 360 Computer the school had and STUDENT projects took priority.

 

[toysoldier]

When I retire, I'm going to make more bookshelves.

 

[blackhawknj]

Due to space limitations-my apartment is not bigger on the inside than on the outside-I have made the library my bookstore and limit my purchases to either real classics, up to date references, or bargains found at used bookstores, yard sales, etc. And yes, a good book on a cold winter's night is vastly preferable to the boob tube.

 

[willk]

I STILL have book from long ago called "From IFS to BITS" about short cuts in Fortran IV programming and how to do it on the old IBM 129 Key punch cards. When I took the course, we got to use that NEW FAST IBM 360 Computer the school had and STUDENT projects took priority.

Brenda Lea has had us on a major spring cleaning. (It's spring time in Louisiana) while working in the attic, I have found many of my old programming books and books on getting started on PC computers. It sure is fun reading the books from the early 80's. Life in computing was so simple, it was complicated.

Haven't programmed in years. All of my data is on 3.25 floppies so even if it would run on today's computers, I doubt I could ever load it on anything. Heck, MSDOS was no problem and I really liked Windows, but now, nothing beats a MAC

 

[RonSwanson]

My problem is my wife's diet, exercise and cook books. We have an upstairs den that is totally unusable because of hundreds of such books and she won't get rid of them.

What's the problem? She is 73 years old. Her strenuous exercise days are over. She never actually did the exercises anyway. She is one of those fortunate people who seems naturally healthy and no one believes that she is over 70.


How about the cookbooks? When she retired at age 70, she declared that she was through with cooking and apparently meant it. We eat cereal for breakfast, grab a small snack at lunchtime, and eat out for an early dinner.
About once every two weeks she will prepare for me her low-fat fried chicken.

Don't get me wrong. Overall, she is a sweet spirited woman who is a joy to live with. I have resigned myself to leaving the books for our heirs to dump. Besides, before I complain too much I have to get rid of a lot of old Gun Digests.