Now that Brigid, Murphy's Law, North, Expatriate Owl and others have posted their collections I suppose I ought to do the same.
Enter the Library:
Ancient History: From Mesopotamia, Ancient Israel, Greece and Rome through the Dark Ages. A heavy focus on warfare with most of the definitive works about the Roman legions being in the collection, but also on religion, architecture, technology and everyday life in antiquity, as well as its culture and works in both the original and translation of ancient authors and playwrights.
Numismatics: The definitive reference guides, handbooks, scholarly treatises, and copies of collections of Ancient Roman, Greek and Jewish coins. The auction and sale catalogs are stored separately and run to 3 banker's boxes of some of the finest photographic representations of coins anywhere. Many of these tomes on coinage are rare.
In this Library, abridged versions are frowned upon:
Modern History and Warfare: Running from where the ancient collection ends through the modern day including American history from the Colonial days forward, history of Israel, Canada, the world at large and today's wars. Victor Davis Hanson and John Keegan feature prominently
Political Thought and Economics: A heavy does of libertarian material but running the gamut from Smith to Marx to Milton Friedman.
Cookbooks: Man doth not live by reading books alone, and recipe books ranging from Apicius' Roman Cookery (yes, recipes that have survived from Ancient Rome) through America's Test Kitchen provide plentiful tasty recipes to sustain one between reading bouts.
Light Reading: Some John Ringo, Some Larry Correia, and some S.M. Stirling now reside upstairs for some current light reads, with most of the light reading and fiction, including the classics, residing downstairs.
Downstairs also has the Legal tomes, books on Scuba Diving and the firearms books.
Nothing like sitting in a room surrounded by books reading on a comfortable couch, or even surfing the internet, blogging, or working online in such a room.
5 comments:
That is quite the grand collection. Sorry I didn't get to meet you and M.L when you were at the shoot em up. Damn wisdom teeth.
Another time.
B.
Thanks.
I'm also sorry I didn't get a chance to meet you as well.
Another time for sure.
My wife and I decided that if we win a lottery and build another house the library will be in contrast to the modern look of the rest of our house. It will be leather and wood. Brass and green glass shade lights. Fireplace. It will have HVAC distinct from the rest of the house so that we can have cigars in there.
Somewhere will be an antique globe, perhaps an edison player.
No barbies.
:-P
I agree with building a classically looking library.
I'd personally avoid the cigars near the books as the smoke can damage the paper unless you're got a real powerful filter system that can suck it up fast.
The lack of barbies would be nice, but its a fair trade-off of the occasional doll creeping in to keep the kids exposed to books.
As part of my cunning plan to raise voracious readers, while they get a small allowance for chores etc, their allowance amount they save is doubled if they spend it on books. So, if they save $5 they can spend $10 if they buy books with the money but only $5 for anything else.
In defense of the cigars, it is an infrequent habit.
I do applaud your cunning plan. The wife and I have a similar mindset, implemented with the rule that books don't come from allowance at all. Our boy has been a great reader, and we make trips to B&N a family outing. We'll buy whatever books he chooses, but we also expect him to demonstrate some self control with the quantity.
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