New Bookshelf

I just found a new application, and thought I would check it out and share it with you. The idea of having an online bookshelf is just funny! I just can’t have enough books.

If you haven’t been to my house you may not have known this about me, but I have a serious book collection. If a collection is ten or more of similar objects grouped together in an organized fashion, then it’s a collection... though my friends have mentioned words like “obsessive” “Huge” and “bigger than the public library”.

I asked my boys to put together a database for me so my books could be catalogued. Ever since I was in first grade and learned about the big wooden box with the tiny drawers I have wanted to have books and organize them. Now that I have enough, we’re all technologically improved. It’s still a lot of work.... to get them all organized. The boys were very excited at first then realized I meant ALL the books... and they became a little wary, unwilling to even begin on a task that looks truly overwhelming. I thought it would still be good to get them organized and inventoried... but they are realistic with the amount of time it would take to accomplish this.

How nice if you could just get the books to pre-organize themselves (which originally I was thinking, buying library copies with the Dewey Decimal coding already conveniently completed. Ahhh.... Which brings me to Kindles. Of course the idea intrigued me immediately. You can download books to the Kindle instantly and carry them around with you. You can carry 20 or 30 books and even more in the same area a paperback used to fit. Ah, now that has possibilities! Since, however, I was raised on paper and ink, I still have doubts that reading from a screen will be quite as satisfying... I am a digital immigrant, after all, and though I do attempt to adjust and learn upcoming technology, it’s not my first language, and reading is for fun for me at this point. I did notice that the downloads are just as much as buying and shipping the same book at times, which of course does nothing to sway the consumer in me.

So until they make it impossible for me to say no, I will keep my old friends on the shelves and take good care of them, since I know they have taken good care of me, educating, entertaining, and enlightening me for many years past and hopefully for many years to come. Enjoy the shelf of my current reads and I will hopefully update it often!