What Kind of Library Are You Building?

​March 16, 2016

Early in our marriage, I received counsel. “You can skimp on most things, but don’t skimp on tools and good books.”

We have since built a library for the boys. We made sure they had how-to books, history books, biographies, inspirational books, and classics. We tried to include adventure, and those that challenged boys to become men. We have commentaries, concordances, dictionaries, counseling books, textbooks. See what the books the boys consistently liked to read.

Some books were acquired when someone else moved and couldn’t take them. Some never read.

It’s hard to guess what one boy will relish and another will ignore. One of our boys couldn’t be forced to read a fiction book. He would listen as we read, but wouldn’t waste his own effort on one. But give him a manual on how a car runs and he would devour it.

Another read manuals on how to get better milk production.

Another devoured books like Knowing God.

So much for preparing our library…how was I to know?

My husband likes the classics and history, rereading books from cover to cover, including the copyright page.

Now that the boys are leaving, and I’m scaling down, I wonder how to part with all these books?

I stand in our library (now serving as a bedroom, school room, guest room, and multipurpose storage room) and feel the loss, before any books leave my shelves.

What books have become best friends? Worth re-reading?

Over the years, my tastes have changed. When I was in high school, my mom provided us with book after book of Danny Orlis. He was a teenager who grew up in the wilderness of Minnesota and became a missionary in South America. Now when I read the book to the boys, I wonder how I could have liked them.

When my husband was deployed, I read a book in a night, escaping to another place with different problems that could be solved in one night’s time. The day would come and my problems would still be there, yet not so much, for my problems seemed little when I learned of another’s in another time. Mine seemed bearable now because of someone who lived before me.

Now with the “knowledge of how books should be written,” I’m more critical of the books I read. This one has a passive verb. That one didn’t have enough dialogue. This one had too much description and not enough action. How did I enjoy these books of the past with so many flaws by today’s standards?

Or I would read book after book to the boys, where we learned how a young boy grew to be a man. The boys would beg for another chapter. Afternoons where time stood still as we shivered in a cold land in the middle of our hot summer. We struggled together, somehow feeling like we had lived through it together.

Some of the boys’ books were good for just a time in their life. There was only so many Hardy Boy books that I could read back to back before I requested something else for a change. But others like Little Britches gave surprises and unexpected adventure.

Best friends…teachers...but my boys have moved on.

I removed some books; they left no pang in my heart, for they had only took up space on the shelf, but did not hold a place in our hearts. But those books that I picked up and remembered the lives lived during the reading…those were the friends that would be kept, at least for now. Those books which spoke to my heart, caused me to change, to think, to grow…I kept those.

When I have been asked to review books, I give five-star rating only to those which I would be willing to purchase (not borrow), and reread. When I evaluate why I would keep them, I realize that the Bible’s standard still holds sway: “whatsoever things are true, just, of good report, if they be of any virtue, any praise, think on these things.”

The article that I re-printed “The Case for Good Taste in Children's Fiction” still helps to be a standard. Guess that’s why many of the classics still stand on my shelf. They do not conform to today’s fast pace writing, they describe a setting too much, but they also tell of real life, how good still conquers evil, hope still reigns, and God still wins making life worth living.

My library has some empty spaces on its shelves now, but when I go to the shelves, my heart still stirs for I know that hope is waiting for me.

It’s like coming home.

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I write about what matters...to you---
women, wives and moms---
about your family, faith and future.
I write about what's hard, what helps and what heals.
I show you how it's done. And not done.
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               Sonya Contreras

Reading
Find more articles about reading here:
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The Danger of The Wrong Story
Using Stories To Teach Lessons
Reading Chair Worth Using
What Do You Read When You Need Refueled?
Worth Reading
Home Furnishings
The Home Library: A Source of Peace, Calm and Security
My Utmost for His Highest
Reading: It's for Your Children
What Kind of Library Are You Building?
Book List: What Every Boy Wants To Read
The Bible with a Heart
Stressed? Read a Book
Books that Influence
What Is a Good Book?
Escape for a Moment of Time
What Is Fiction Good for?
The Case for Good Taste in Children's Books
What Should Fiction Do?
What Does a 5-Star Book Mean?
Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover
Treasures To Explore

Writing Articles
Find more articles here:
Why I Write
The Face that Shows
Do You Believe in Yourself?
The Publishing Process
Calling All Reviewers!
How Can You Help?

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