When I was a little girl, I use to think that the term “the library” was another way of saying someone was in the bathroom. That’s because my father did most of his reading while sitting on “the throne.” He didn’t have a lot of money, but he would have given me his last dime if I wanted to buy a book. Do you remember Dick, Jane, and Sally? I was obsessed with reading, and he wanted to encourage my love of books.
Fast-forward about forty years. When I first met my husband, we immediately hit it off. We had so much in common. He adored me and I love being adored. He took me to a bookstore on our first date, and he bought me a book. He once owned a used bookstore and his house was filled with thousands of books. I had found my prince.
Our collection is stored all over our house, and the vast majority of the books you see on my blog come from our collection. My haunts include used bookstores, thrift shops, and I’m addicted to eBay. Every nurse needs a hobby. It’s a good thing that my husband is handy in the workshop. He makes all of our bookshelves. Here’s a small sample of our collection. This is a corner of our basement. Bookshelves line all four walls of the basement, and books are stacked to the rafters. Some of you have asked me if I read all of the books I review. I don’t read every Harlequin Romance book. The plots are thin and if you’ve read one Harlequin Romance book, you’ve read them all. Otherwise, I read the books I write about. Reading helps me relax after working at the hospital. It’s a great escape. Currently, I’m reading a book about Mary Roberts Rinehart. She was a nurse who became a famous mystery writer. I'll be writing about her soon.Hello, I’m Mother Jones, RN and I’m a bookoholic.
That's quite amazing, Mother Jones! I bet someday you'll also become an awesome writer!
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed at how many books you have!! Then again, I'm not surprised.
ReplyDeleteFrom a fellow book junkie.....who also lives with a book junkie......
I used to hang around the used bookstore in town when I was a kid. I won't stay in a store longer than a few minutes if at all possible... unless it's a bookstore. In which case I have to be pried out.
ReplyDelete(OK, a record store, too... I still say records, anyway.)
But I have just one teensy little question. A little tiny one, and not meaning to give offense...
But, MJ, books on their sides?
Hi Curmudgeon. I miss the bookstores in Chicago. I loved going to Barbara's Books in Oak Park, and Women and Children First. I know we are being bad for putting books on their sides, but we are running out of room. Therefore I'm setting up a new charity called, "Save the Books Foundation." Contributions are not tax deductable. Write all checks out to Mother Jones RN so I can build an addition onto my house:-)
ReplyDeleteMJ
You look like you have a great collection.
ReplyDeletecan i come over to your house and play?
ReplyDeleteWow!! Just look at all those books.... I don't usually resort to being green with envy, but just now when I look in the mirror I see a faint, faint tinge of green.
ReplyDeleteOne of my goals in life is owning a huge library. Something like yours would be nice.
ReplyDeleteCompletely unrelated - I hope you don't mind. I've come accross a petition to free the bulgarian nurses wrongfully imprisoned in Libya for transmitting AIDS to kids (which they didn't do, according to many scientific reports).
The petition is here:
http://www.podpiski.org/?free:bgnurseslibya_en
Would you mind advertising it on your blog? Since there are quite a few nurses coming here, I figured they could be interested in signing and hopefully helping these women.
Oh Momma Jones...those pics! They remind me of my library back home with all those books and books to read...
ReplyDeleteHere at uni all I have are fat med textbooks that invariably cause you to want to hit yourself on the head with them after about 20 hours of staring at them. Hmph.
Wow, you are like one of those Russian dolls... you open it up and there is another inside, and another inside that one, and another inside that one...
ReplyDeleteHow funny, my dad referred to the bathroom as "the library" too.
ReplyDeleteI have tons of books strewn all over the house, not just crammed on my many bookshelves. There isn't much in life I like better than a good book.
Cool book collection--I love to read, too. But my main relaxation hobby is knitting, usually psychedelic stuff. Recently my buddy's husband put together 4 new bookshelves for me...to hold my yarn!
ReplyDeleteWow ~ what a collection! I used to have tons of books but I usually wind up giving them away after I read them so that someone else can enjoy them too. Books are a great escape from work!
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading, but not as much as my mother and grandmother. they are advid readers. I struggle slightly with reading, and usually need a rulers to follow in between the lines because I am dyslexic.
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy reading and find myself in Libraries and bookstore, usually reading something on politics or the supernatural. Sometimes I will read a home improvement book because something broke down in my house.
Levi
Oh my gosh, that's an amazing amount of books! I love your blog!
ReplyDeleteI had no idea you loved books so much. When my twin and I were very young, my dad used to pay us a nickle for every book we read. I still love reading to this date.
ReplyDeleteThe next time I visit I want to check out your garage.
I have just one thing to say: Powell's City of books.
ReplyDeleteYes, they have an on-line presence, but it's their stores, especially the "mother ship" that is a bibliophile's wet dream:
A few facts about the City of Books:
* 68,000 square feet packed with books
* we buy 3,000 used books over the counter every day
* approximately 3,000 people walk in and buy something every day
* another 3,000 people just browse and drink coffee
* our parking garage provides space for 40 cars (ok, so there are bigger parking garages)
* we stock 122 major subject areas and more than 3,500 subsections
* you'll find more than 1,000,000 volumes on our shelves
* approximately 80,000 book lovers browse the City's shelves every day, in Portland and via the Internet. So is our mother ship the world's largest bookstore? Heck, it may be bigger than your whole town.
Go here for a virtual tour:
http://www.powells.com/info/places/burnsideinfo.html
Hello, I’m Mother Jones, RN and I’m a bookoholic.
ReplyDeleteHi, Mother Jones (snicker).
I devour literature. Simply cannot get enough of the stuff. My gig is naval history.
BTW- Nice to see that Pennsy (Pennsylvania Independent) frequents your blog. I adore Pennsy. Very insightful.
That is some collection you have there. *green*
ReplyDeleteHe brought you to a bookstore on your first date? *greener*
wow. wow. WOW.
Any idea where i can find another guy like him? :)
I love books too. I am reading a book by a Canadian author right now, Miriam Toews. I have read two of her books previously and loved them.
ReplyDeleteI have always loved books. My father taught me a love of books from a very young age. I love getting lost in a good story.
I love books too. I am reading a book by a Canadian author right now, Miriam Toews. I have read two of her books previously and loved them.
ReplyDeleteI have always loved books. My father taught me a love of books from a very young age. I love getting lost in a good story.
I'm a bookaholic, too, MJ.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing my parents ever did for me was make books a treat. When I was a big kid, I was "given the privilege" to ride my bike to the library.
I bow down before your prodigious collection. I'm up to 12 bookshelves right now, and beginning to overflow and ready for the next.
I love bookaholics.
/jo
p.s. I LOVED Women and Children First in Chicago! How funny! I went there, too!
ReplyDeleteI used to love Unabridged on Clark Street, too....and Platypus up in Evanston.
/jo
your collection is amazing...I know where to come if I need a suggestion for a book.
ReplyDeleteI love reading, too. Half Price Books rules! At any given time, I have 4 or 5 books going simultaneously. I have always read more than one book at a time.
ReplyDelete~RWS
Ours is the house of thirteen bookcases. We turned over one whole room to bookcases. It's got five glass-fronted ones from IKEA. The rest are in the bedroom and study - except for the cook books which are in the thirteenth bookcase in the cat's room.
ReplyDeleteHi Mother Jones -
ReplyDeleteI would love to talk to you about a business partnership. I was referred to by National Nurse. Great Site! Thanks! Julie@simplyhired.com
I've recently gotten into Robin Gunn 'Sisterchiks' series. Pretty good! I just finished the last Harry Potter book(I know, I know, kids' stuff, but everybody loves magic!). Then there's 'The Lottery Winner' by Mary Higgins Clark, 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom, 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown, and some of Dean R. Koontz's novels(although the last 2-3 have been kind of blah). The list goes on and on. Bookaholics Anonymous meeting tonight!
ReplyDeleteAt this event there will be U. This is an early, deliberately designed AGE-breaker that showed real promise in animal studies. They are now cheerfully taking advantage of it all, however riding the wave is half the battle in the publishing world. Now, at the dawn of the biotechnology era, the inevitable is no longer inevitable. Are you new to healthy life extension? It's important that we begin using the language of the Longevity Dividend to keep up the momentum. If science is held back well enough . ANTI-AGING, A TERM LOST TO THE JUNKYARD? Last but not least, we will probably have the ability to build strong, useful, complex machines out of individual atoms and molecules. Critics have argued that superlongevity will inevitably lead to boredom, while proponents have denied this claim.
ReplyDeleteI read Dick, Jane, Sally and Wendy when I was about 6, and kept a book for my kids, so it was a global phenomenon, but very American even then (but there wasn't much Australian culture in the sixties. We were heavily influenced by the UK and USA).....Harlequin Romances are available on DVD now.....enough said...
ReplyDeleteI love books!!! You should try Bookcrossing.com for soem fun. And see where some of them go. :-)
ReplyDelete~TuxBaby, who used to call the bathroom "the library" too- because of my mom
OK, for all you biblioholics out there -- here's a little quiz to see just what kind of reader you are!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gotoquiz.com/what_kind_of_reader_are_you
tip of the hat to alphabtich: http://alphabitch7.blogspot.com/
We have more books than we can store in our Berkeley apartment--so many of them are packed away in boxes until we move to the New England farmhouse of our dreams. And we have a rule: for every new, non-essential, non-gift book that enters the house, one book must leave the house. If the new book is possessed of many, many pages, then enough books have to leave the house to free up the appropriate amount of shelf space.
ReplyDeleteThis is why we love the library. Or maybe we can just come over to your house!
I knew there had to be more than one reason I liked you. I've still got my old Trixie Belden books from back in the day...Your a lucky woman Nurse Ratched.
ReplyDeleteI forgot one. This particular book is in the same style that you've been showing us, Mother Jones. It's also kind of gothic romance. The book is titled "Bride of Kilkerran" by Kathleen Westcott. I read it quite a few times when I was a teenager in high school(many moons ago!).
ReplyDeleteI'm a dork: I was so happy to learn that the covers you use in your blog are books you actually own.
ReplyDeleteSpeechless,
N
hello, i'm hipparchia, and i'm a bookoholic.
ReplyDeleteand a fan of mary roberts rhinehart. and a fan of charlotte macleod, whose biography of mary roberts rhinehart i so want to read.
i've got somewhere between 1500 and 2000 books [i lost count a few years ago]. the only reason the number isn't higher is because i live so close to the public library.
while i like living surrouned by books, and the money just jumps out of my pocket every time i go in a bookstore, it finally dawned on me that letting my fellow taxpayers subsidize my reading habit is a good thing. i wear out my library card [the tough plastic kind] about once every six months. so far, the library hasn't taken to charging me for new cards.