Just a thought

...as we begin to liquidate our holdings here, after 32 years in Alaska. My bookshelves just walked out the door yesterday, for the sum of $155.00. If that wasn't bad enough on my psyche, I have given away most of my books, my precious books. It's not as though I owned a library of classical literature, although I did own English translations of both The Iliad and The Odyssey. These others were "classics"to my quirky and yet somewhat pedestrian tastes.

Authors like Martin Cruz Smith (Arkady, when is your next adventure?) and Patrick Tilley (Jesus as a time-traveling warrior from another planet)in his one true opus, "Mission." "Source," certainly James Michener's best work - and it was about archaeology! Ray Bradbury's "Golden Apples of the Sun," And of course the late Patrick O'Brian's 18-tome saga of "Lucky Jack" Aubrey of the Royal Navy. Julian Stockwin's Kydd series is the next best thing,and it, like the "Sharps Rifles series, has gone away as well. So many authors and books. Like friends, only reliable. On the eve of seeing O'Brian's "Master and Commander" leave my possession forever, I began to reread it, and I must say I could read it again, and again.

I've kept a few books, mostly on the Cold War and books that suit my growing humanistic philosophy, a few science books to be housed by my son the science guy.

And I have a "Nook," an e-book, which my wife tells me is all and more of what I want, and takes up a lot less space in our 960 square foot condo (I feel like I should only use the abbreviations "sq"and "ft"when referring to the condo, which of course is an abbreviation for the term "condominium"). In any case, the feeling you get when you give away all of your corporeal, material literature, and settle for "virtual" literature,is a sense, maybe ,not of death or dying, but certainly an adjustment to a new "plane of existence." I guess that's what retirement is, too.

Feel free to send me suggestions from fiction (especially historical fiction), pop science, and history. If I cannot download it onto my Nook, maybe I can sneak out and buy it in its corporeal form.
Posted by ~Bill at 5:31 PM 0 comments