16 May, 2012

Snooping in the library Part 1

Several years ago we played detectives in someone's house. We snooped around trying to discover who it was who'd let us stay in their house.

We were visiting another city while doing our rounds of churches as missionaries and the local church put us up in someone's house. Except those "someones" were away for the weekend and no one had told us any more than the names of the home owners and that they had little boys, just like us.

It is a strange feeling — to tread on a someone else's private space with their permission or presence.

The main thing we did, on the snooping front, was look at their books. It is amazing what you can tell about someone from their book collection. As it was, we found out these two people's profession, the sorts of things they like to read, and that one of them had their Ph.D.

It isn't the only time this has happened to us, by the way. I guess people figure they can trust missionaries? But it is always a slightly weird experience.

Anyway, I'm going to show you a bit about me by showing you my library!

For starters, it isn't large, at least it isn't as large as it would be if we were living in Australia. We tend not to acquire books that we won't read more than once. We often rake through our collection looking for books to offload at Thrift Shop.

Because we live close to an English library (CAJ's), we mostly read library books, so our shelves are biased towards non-fiction, reference-type books.

So, let's have a snoop:

 Here you can see that I like craft. Actually, I think I like the idea of craft more than the actual getting around to it. I haven't done any stamping or quilting . . . yet! I do really like paper craft, and we have a number of origami books around the place. Japan's a great place to live if you like origami, the paper is so cheap here in comparison to Australia!

You can also see quite a number of music books. I don't play as much as I'd like either, but I'm happy to still have these on my shelf for those times when I do.

Now a bit of my Australian side comes out. Colleen McCullough is an Australian author and I'm a bit of a fan. This is only a small selection of my collection of her books.

And I'm an OMFers, note the J. Hudson Taylor biography!

365 TV-Free days is a great book. So many ideas. I think this one will be coming with us on our 7,000 km road trip to Uluru.

And one non-book element here is Nessy. Can you see her? We once had a short-termer visit from Scotland who gave us this cute ceramic gift.

Not the best photo, but we have more Colleen McCullough, plus a Scrapbooking and cardmaking book (more craft-type projects that I rarely do), cross-stitch book, Japanese Fairy Tales, and some coffee table books from Australia.

For Janet, there are some Footprints magazines stowed there on the left and a Bible Promise Book that has come in handy when writing cards for people.

Now here's a shelf that I frequent when I'm writing and editing. There are a number of books there on the right that are fabulous. In the middle are some more coffee-table type books that we love to show visitors. On the left of them are a whole pile of magazines that I frequently flip through when thinking about various editing and layout issues. On the left are some more cross-stitch books as well as some Occupational Therapy assessment forms. Phew, this shelf is stacked!

And here we have some Bibles, including our Japanese-English Bible. Plus various "helps", including a large Japanese character dictionary, and our Australian dictionary. Can you guess what we like to do in our spare time?

The non-book item is a plastic origami case. Terribly useful.

I think that's enough snooping for now, I'll do another snoop another day.

Surprised by anything? I think I was surprised at how many crafty books I have on the shelf. Now I'm wondering if I really need all of them . . .


5 comments:

Footprints Australia said...

Heh heh heh ... glad to see Footprints rates a place on your shelf, especially when space is at such a premium!!!!

:-)

Jamie Jo said...

Magazine Article Writing... hmmm. That's interesting! As for me, I find it hard to visit with people in their living rooms if there is a bookcase in back of them. I am so distracted seeing titles. I loved this post! What a fun game.

Wendy said...

Glad you liked it Jamie Jo, I'd like to see other people snoop on their own libraries on their blogs!

Judie Strachan said...

"Getting Published"? I want that one. Must check the library before they sell all their books and move to who-knows-where!
Do you recommend Colleen? I've seen the movie of "Tim" (Mel Gibson at 20 - Super yummy!) and read "The Ladies of Missalonghi" (which I think would have been a better book if she HAD plagiarised "The Blue Castle"). Never got to any others, I wasn't impressed with "The Thornbirds" on TV, despite the presence of the almost-as-yummy Richard Chamberlain.
Craft has never appealed to me: I don't see a use for most things done with it. Except cards. I was probably introduced via the wrong types. As I sometimes say, I have a moderate amount of talent, but not enough patience to stick at it & get good at it.

Wendy said...

Judie, I do recommend Colleen. She is an intelligent writer, and writes well. Not all her books are to my taste, but her books are on the meatier end of fiction. I like her very much.

The practical side of craft does bother me too. Probably part of the reason that I don't do too much of it. I do like to dream about it, and appreciate other's creations. It does also provide me with needed relaxation time. I made it through my week of meetings last week by cross-stitching and knitting! It helped me stay focussed.