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Mary G
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| Posted: Feb 14 2009 at 8:18am | IP Logged
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Dh and I go round and round (usually when we're getting ready to pack up and pay for our own move  !) about the amount of books I have around here ... and my penchant for buying books at library book sales, thrift stores, etc.
I thought I'd post here one of my more recent stories about the BENEFITS of an extensive, if eclectic  , home library. We were talking the other day about the revolution and listening to Johnny Tremain and generally reveling in being able to explore beyond names and dates. Maggie asked if Paul Revere signed the Declaration of Independence ... rather than head to the computer to google (which I often do, don't get me wrong), I handed her a book I'd purchased at a library booksale a few years back (Greenville days) ... titled Know Your Declaration of Independence and the 56 Signers by George Ross. The cool thing about this long oop book (not just that I had it one the shelf !) is that it has pictures and short bios of each of the 56 ... a great resource. She has since taken to typing up each of the 56 names and one fact about them.
What are your home library success stories?
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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
my website that combines my schooling, hand-knits work, writing and everything else in one spot!
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Lori
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| Posted: Feb 14 2009 at 9:38am | IP Logged
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No particular success stories here, except having the books I've carted around with me since childhood close at hand to share with my kids when they're old enough.
My Valentine's present was a new bookshelf...DH and I go round and round about my books as well (collecting, stacking, etc) but he'd rather they be in a shelf than on the floor!
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juststartn
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Yeah, I could use more bookshelves. We moved in April of last year. And I still have so many books that needs shelving...
Too many books, too little time.
Rachel
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David 5/7/07
Ava Maria, in the arms of Jesus, 9/5/08
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CatholicMommy
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(IKEA for $20 tall, narrow bookshelves has been a HUGE blessing on our household - for the first time since I was about 5, I have all my books OUT and on shelves and they are now organized loosely by subject area so they are easy to put back. Half of the master bedroom is our "library" with current homeschooling and interest books in the living room)
Success story? I don't have as many duplicates as I was worried I would have!
The great thing is just as Mary G described above: being able to pull out a book based on just about any interest. I am always happy when I have a book that someone is wondering about and I can lend it or explain it....
Also, just knowing that we don't have to go to the library for "new" books all of the time (we still do! and bring home stacks and stacks of them!).
My favorite incidents are when someone highly recommends a book and I don't know if we have it - and I go look - and we DO! And it's a wonderful book!
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Rachel May
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Here's my success...my FIL has been decluttering his house into mine so I've ended up with tons of art education books since his job was to design art curricula for a public school district and a closed box full of books that I was sorely tempted to purge without opening.
The other day Thomas asked me to teach him to paint, and lo and behold I had books to teach him to paint, mold clay, draw with colored pencils and more. And we had fun doing it!
The closed box yieled several treasures for Black History month. I especially am enjoyingStitchin' and Pullin'.
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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SarahA
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| Posted: Feb 18 2009 at 9:55pm | IP Logged
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Sorry if this is a bit after the fact--I'm only on the forum about once a week now...
Our home library success is actually my husband's success. We have one due to his book collecting throughout many years. He always loved books, and in high school and college found some great collectibles. While we were in Maryland for 4 years, he found several annual book sales at schools (they did them as fund raisers, I guess--the best we found was Sacred Heart in Bethesda) and libraries. He'd wait till the last few days, where it was $5.00 for a brown grocery bag filled with any books there. I didn't know what we'd do with them all. I'm a bibliophile myself, but I thought he was maybe a little addicted. I was glad when we moved to Hawaii and had to leave/store several tall bookcases in MD. Then, I started finding all these great Catholic books online...lo and behold, he had to tell me we had enough. We literally had bookcases in every room but the upstairs bathroom.
Then, we moved again. Now, we have the library (an actual room) we've always wanted. We got the books and bookcases from storage, and also bought more from the unfinished wood store. There's a reading couch, a "new" piano from craigslist, and several little people looking at all kinds of interesting books purchased for them years ago, when their mother never dreamed she'd be a homeschooler and their father held onto that hope. Mike has them arranged by topic--religion, classics, language & travel books, art & music, poetry & prose, science...and we still have bookcases all over the house...and we also have readers who try to take books into the upstairs bathroom.
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Sarah
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JodieLyn
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well.. I have some various aged craft and do it yourself books.. that have come in very handy for my son's scout den. One year he was supposed to be in charge of the game for their meeting.. it was all snowy outside.. I pulled out "Back to Basics" and we found the tag game of "Fox and Geese" which is played.. in snow. and we've found some crafts in other books that I've snagged here and there and kept after looking through them because they had interesting and possible crafts in them.
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DivineMercy
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Our "library" is just starting and so I hold onto everything. My son won several books at a literacy fair when he was 2 years old. One was a book about penguins. He didn't care for it then so it just went on the shelf. We just finished listening to Mr. Popper's Penguins in the van and he had great questions when we got home. I was able to pull it from the shelf along with some Ranger Rick and Big Backyard magazines. Boy was he a happy camper!
Michelle
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Mary G
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| Posted: Feb 19 2009 at 4:58am | IP Logged
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SarahA wrote:
| Then, we moved again. Now, we have the library (an actual room) we've always wanted. We got the books and bookcases from storage, and also bought more from the unfinished wood store. There's a reading couch, a "new" piano from craigslist, and several little people looking at all kinds of interesting books purchased for them years ago, when their mother never dreamed she'd be a homeschooler and their father held onto that hope. Mike has them arranged by topic--religion, classics, language & travel books, art & music, poetry & prose, science...and we still have bookcases all over the house...and we also have readers who try to take books into the upstairs bathroom. |
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ooo, I want to move-in! 8yod and I were watching My Fair Lady and I was drooling over Prof Higgins library!
One type of book dh never can mess with is my collection of knitting/craft books. I have some that are oop and are now worth a fortune, but worth even more to me since I've kept them with me so long!
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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
my website that combines my schooling, hand-knits work, writing and everything else in one spot!
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SarahA
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| Posted: Feb 19 2009 at 5:51am | IP Logged
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Mary,
We also drool over that library. Tall ceilings, floor to ceiling books, rolling ladder and even spiral staircase...amazing.
Ours comes with a sacrifice--since we're using that room for a library, we have to use a bedroom for a schoolroom, meaning 4 kids share 1 bedroom. Works for now. Since we keep growing and the income probably won't (i.e. no super-huge houses in our future) the kids better get used to it for the long haul! 
I don't know what we'll do if we move somewhere less affordable and have to downsize...leave books in storage again? Now that they're being used as references (and even a borrowing library), I can't bear that thought! 
Besides having a good library for the kids (and us), our latest success has been to provide good reading material for our youngest's Godfather. His wife is Catholic, and he is just now going through RCIA. They came down for the weekend, and he expressed some doubts/questions he still has. We all discussed stuff, but then I went to the library and pulled down lots of books for him (he was a philosophy major, so the answers he's looking for are deeper than some "beginner" Catholic books.) He was really excited to dig in...and we were thrilled to be able to provide them! I pray they help...
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Sarah
Army wife, Mama to (so far...) 2 boys, 1 girl, then 2 more boys
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Topic: Home library success story
