Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Reorganizing the Library

A friend was cleaning out her library and gave me a bunch of books. When I got the book booty home I found that my library was crowed too. So I took a long hard look at what was on my shelves.
I found a ton of text books from the years I spent in the class room. Books on management, books on accounting, books on economics, and ethics. Computer books that have been obsolete for years. I had magazines that I once thought I could not live without but flipping through the pages, I cannot recall why I thought that. I guess I believed that I might need to refer back to my quantitative analysis text, international business, or perhaps my cultural studies books when I retired. I packed all the books in a box and tomorrow they are going to the Hannah Home Thrift Store and I made room for Atlas Shrugged, Dr. Zhifago and the Education of Little Tree.
I tell you what I didn't toss - I have an old Whole Earth Catalog which is like the Internet in a book except it was published long before I had a computer. I also subscribed to Mother Earth News for a few years and I kept those old magazines too. As I looked back through the pages printed on recycled paper I found a treasure trove of articles on small farm life. My love of that magazine is one reason we fell in love with our little farm and moved here back in 1980.
So I organized my library with sections on gardening, landscaping, how-to books, writing, music, literature, and the classics. I'm getting rid of the fluff because there's not enough time to read the good stuff.
I'm not sure if it's because of all the years I've spent working for large corporations or what, but big business no longer holds any appeal to me. I'm now more interested in how to get an early start with spring tomatoes, and how to grow more of what we eat. All the business I care to know these days is how earn enough money with a tired old tractor and ten acres of land to supplement our retirement income live comfortably until the cows come home.

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