So how about it? Books in every room? Just a few here and there?
What’s your weakness? Children’s books? Cookbooks? Theology? Hobbies? Novels? Coffee table books?
And if you could only keep FIVE books, what would they be? We’ll give everyone a freebie and say that you automatically get to keep your Bible so you don’t have to include that in the five. And you don’t have to include books for your whole family – just you. But if you want to pick the top five for your children as well that would be interesting to see!
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush | Homeschooling with Cozy Books
The number of books in our house??? Let’s just say that my husband and I met in graduate school for Library and Information Science. I don’t think there’s enough time to count the number of books we have, plus what we now have for our four year old son.
I would say though that my weakness is for “reference” type books. I’ll buy novels at secondhand stores and garage sales, but I usually only purchase nonfiction new. I love anything published by DK. I think they have fabulous photographs and illustrations.
My top five books would be (in no particular order):
Smithsonian Birds of North America
Smithsonian Institution Animal
The American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening
Smithsonian Handbooks Birds of Florida
Better Homes and gardens New Cookbook
Mod Girl – Up a Road Slowly was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I still have it but haven’t read it in who knows how long. I will have to pull that one out and read it again.
And as a “I’ve met someone famous”… I had dinner in Gladys Hunt’s home! We were attending her church for a while and when David and I signed up for a dinner thing we were put into the group that went to her home. Honestly I haven’t read Honey for a Child’s Heart even though I’ve heard so much about it. But what impressed me was Hunt’s personal story told in a little book from long ago I found in my church. For more than a diamond: Romances from real life
is a book of love stories – how real people met and married when they waited on God and God brought them together. That book had a profound impact on me as a single woman. I think Hunt’s story stood out to me because she was also a student at Michigan State so when she wrote about her college time, I could picture it all in my mind.
Number of books? Too many to count!
I got a Kindle last Christmas and I totally love it.
I have been reading so much more now. It is by far my favorite gadget ever.
I would give up my computer, my cell phone, my digital camera, my iPod before my Kindle!
My Top 5:
Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life
by Glady’s Hunt
{While this isn’t a “mothering book” it has most shaped me as a mother.}
To Kill A Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Up A Road Slowly
by Irene Hunt
{One girl’s coming of age story… A classmate first introduced me to young Julie Trelling through a sixth grade book report. After class I went straight to the school library to borrow the book. Julie and I have been kindred spirits and frequent companions ever since.}
Stepping Heavenward
by Elizabeth Prentiss
I Heard the Owl Call my Name
by Margaret Craven
And, this breaks the rules but 3 more:
Heart of a Small Town
by Robin MacDonald
{His photography inspires me endlessly, and fills me with pride for my Alabama heritage.}
Tongues of Flame
It Wasn’t All Dancing
by Mary Ward Brown
{Two volumes of short stories that beautifully and realistically capture life in the deep south.}
I had to guess how many books we have–too many to count. Early in our marriage, I measured and we had about 100 shelf feet of books. We’ve added several bookshelves worth of books since then.
My top five books: three would be The Lord of the Rings books, one for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (that I’ve had since kindergarten, I love the meticulously detailed pictures), and I guess I’d take Forgotten Arts and Crafts for the last one, because I’d need new crafts to take up in place of reading.
I have no idea how many but it’s a lot! That’s mainly how I homeschool–using living books.
Top 5? For me it would be: Lord of the Rings trilogy (all in one volume, of course); Persuasion by Jane Austen; Trusting God by Jerry Bridges; The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton (my all-time favorite picture book); The Valley of Vision by Arthur Bennett.
I can’t wait to see what others will keep!!
Five books? Oooh…that’s hard. To choose five means I’d have to choose books I’d actually read more than once. Let’s see…Sense & Sensibility would have to be one. Poetic Knowledge is the book that has impacted me most in regard to homeschooling and I intend to read it every-other-year, so that would be one. Also The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Volume II of my complete works of Jonathon Edwards, and then James Herriot’s Treasury for Children to read to the babies.
We…okay I…have books everywhere. And frankly I’m not very tidy about it. I have piles on every table, and the bookcases are stuffed. I really don’t know how many I have, but I know there is a reason we call our wide front entry with the shelving “The Library.”
I think I’ll have to add one more book to my list… how could I possibly leave off The Valley of Vision? I’ve now rounded out my top 5 to my top 9. Oh well.
How exciting to have met and spent time with Gladys Hunt! I imagine that she is a lovely person. I would love to have coffee with her. I’ll be on the lookout for the love stories book!
I’d find a good anthology and a good history encyclopedia!
Of the books I own, I would keep Shakespeare’s complete works and “High School Subjects Self Taught,” a 14oo page book that would keep me busy for a while, it has just about any subject you could ever want to learn more about, and several languages I might want to learn.
My Bible would be one of those with 4 different Bible versions side by side if I could only have one Bible, too.
I really like reading the Narnia books (and most books, actually) in small size rather than one clunky book, but if I’m limited in number, I would get the complete Narnia series in one big unwieldy book.
As an only child books were my friends. As a first grade teacher books were my tools. Now as a mother and home educator I hope to pass along the appreciation of books to my children.
Top 5
1. Westminster Confession of Faith
2. Stepping Heavenward
3. Every Child Should Have a Chance (Dr. Leila Denmark)
4. Pilgrim’s Progress
5. The Pace of a Hen (an older book I recently aquired that’s about being content)
I’ve more books than I care to count. My husband keeps reminding me that there are such things as libraries.
But, if I could only keep FIVE?
Hmm.
I’m reading Elisabeth Elliot’s “Keep a Quiet Heart” presently. The copy I’m reading now is at least my third copy. It’s a keeper. Obviously, whoever I loaned my previous two copies to thought so also.
Elizabeth Goudge’s “A Bird in a Tree”. I love this book.
“Anne of Green Gables”. I think. I might have to swap it out for “Anne’s House of Dreams”.
“The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers”.
Something by C.S. Lewis that includes “The Inner Ring” and “The Great Divorce”.
Books in every room. I cannot even begin to count.
Choose 5 aside from the Bible? Not in any particular order: Wuthering Heights, any of Jan Karon’s Mitford books, Dick Raymond’s The Joy of Gardening, Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, any good quality United States history book.
I’d say my kids (the older two boys @ 8, 6 years) would choose: My Father’s Dragon trilogy, Sector 7, National Audubon Guide to the Night Sky (I find this under their beds, their nighttime solo reading choice quite often), Mr. Popper’s Penguins (as of late), and while not quite a “book”, they enjoy Boys’ Life magazine.
Finding shelves that fit perfectly is a delight and a blessing. We currently have a set-up that made me think again about the verse, “He makes all things work together…” when our mis-matched hodgepodge exactly fit the whole wall of one room in our small house.
Yes, books in every room but the bathrooms (I have very tight rules about the care of books). The books in the livingroom are never read, though. They more frequently are used as “shopping” fodder for the children’s games.
Hmmm, five for me:
1. Enchantment by Card
2. The Perilous Gard by Pope
3. Jane Eyre by Bronte
4. Sea Wolf by London
5. Italian FolkTales by Calvino
For the kids (this is harder since I’ve got a spectrum between 2-year-old and a reader, but if we had to make-do I’d make up stories for the oldest):
1. My Very First Mother Goose by Iona Opie and Rosemary Wells
2. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury
3. Tales of the Kingdom –Mains (only if it’s an ed. with the original illustrations from the early 80s)
4. Owl Babies by Waddell
5. Quick as a Cricket by Wood and Wood
Books are very comforting to me, in their physicality. I realized just this year that I cast about for one to tuck in my purse when I leave the house, like the children do for a little toy. I almost never get a chance to read while I’m out, I just like having it with me.
(And for months my 2-y-o insisted on going to bed clutching the book I read right before sleep-time.)
Katherine takes her books to bed too, Amy!
Books for me:
1. My one-volume Lord of the Rings
2. My one-volume Jane Austen
3. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (the whole space trilogy if I could find it in one volume)
4. Mommy, Teach Me by Barbara Curtis (preschool curriculum in one volume – we reference it almost every day)
5. Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler (both for my reference and for loaning to friends…it’s my most loaned out book of our 500+)
I was in denial until I actually walked around and took a quick count … over 5000 books! How did it come to this? Oh my! My husband was a pastor for 20+ years and has all of his resources, plus he is student of history and that involves quite a collection. He now works as an archivist at a local history library. We turned our 2 car garage into his office and three walls are lined with tall bookcases – the fourth has bookcases but a huge window as well. Oh my! The children have their own collections filling the ample shelves in their rooms, and mine … four bookcases filled, and that doesn’t include my cookbook collection! How can I possibly come up with a top five list? I just can’t!
You all are so funny! Collected volumes! Didn’t anticipate that, but I guess it fits the rules! LOL!