What's On Your Shelf?

I have family visiting right now - two weeks worth of visit.  We haven't seen my 93 year old grandmother for about two years, so it's a welcome visit, although the normal stresses of doubling the number of people in a house and three adult women in the kitchen apply.

And as usually happens when people visit, our discussion turns to the books that are on the shelves covering at least two walls in every room of my house.  The discussions that arise are markedly different depending upon whether our visitors are military or civilian, and my Grandmother's experience as an Army spouse during WWII was quite a long time ago.

This leads to strange comments like, "Oh!  I see you have two of Iris Chang's books!  She was so marvelous.  It's just awful what happened to her.  And what is this?  You Can Fight Tanks With Bayonets.  That's... interesting. Hm.  And Militant Tricks?  I haven't seen that title.  Very interesting bookshelf."

I've always worried that if by some horrible coincidence the poop hits the fan in our house, the forensic investigators will take one look at our bookshelves and assume we're secret-selling arms dealers with a passion for survivalist practices. 

I mean, hey, there's no question we've got the literature to survive a mega disaster (literature does not equal food or supplies, though, it just makes you feel better).  But it's got to look suspicious to walk into someone's house and see an entire bookcase devoted to intelligence fiascos, double agents, and black ops.  That particular bookcase is opposite the bookcase holding our horror genre books.  Which is probably a bad juxtaposition now that I think about it.  Stephen King and Aldrich Ames are probably not a good combination.

On the other hand, let a military person walk into our house and our bookshelves offer hours of delighted conversation and hashing out of various scenarios and conspiracy theories. "Dude!  You have The Battle For Mogadishu!  How did you like it?  Don't you think that that this point they could have..."

I have to admit, our bookshelves are the reason that AFG and I have put off becoming foster parents at this particular stage of our lives.  I'm not sure how a social worker would feel walking into a house and seeing titles like Terrorism in the Twentieth Century, Warlord,  or The Jungle Warriors.  They might feel kind of weird placing a child in our house in that case.

I'd love to know if anyone else has had some military/civilian disconnects due to their bookshelves.  What are you all reading?

Comments

[Solitary Wind Chime]

My bookshelves are equally as odd. I'm getting a masters in military history, so my books feed my husbands' military ones. Plus he's very into poetry...in Spanish...and Shakespeare. Combine that with my love for all things Gone with the Wind and you've got an interesting mix.

[Kanani]

As a writer & editor, I've got loads of books, though have given many away over the years, culling the collection until it's only those that mean something to me. My prize collection is poetry --everything from Yeats to Mary Oliver, Stanley Kuntiz and Rita Dove. I love literary fiction --once I find an author I love, I read everything he or she has written. I have loads of Edward Abbey, as well as books by Anne Tyler, Cormac McCarthy, Wallace Stegner, and perhaps my favorite poet of all --Robinson Jeffers.

[Lee Anne]

I just finished a dissertation on nineteenth-century women's life writing, so I have tons of letter collections and diaries as well as novels, poetry, teaching anthologies and literary theory. My husband, a pilot, has everything you need on aviation history, the Air Force, and engineering. And, we both love to cook, so we have a lot of cookbooks, too. We're about to start adding children's books to that collection as well. So, yeah, it's an odd assortment.

[Marine Wife]

Movers hate us. Most of our weight seems to be books. The last time we moved, one actually asked me if we read all of them. I probably should have said, "No, we just enjoy watching you guys break your backs carrying them."

[Ann - AF spouse]

Addicted to books! I love trashy romance and gory murder. Spouse loves adventure/mystery.

I joined a spouse bookclub two years ago. Had the best time, and read great books I would not have found on my own. And, any excuse to go to lunch and hangout.

[Mrs G]

Heh, movers hate us as well, I think we had 18-20 book boxes our last move (overseas) although I claimed at least 5 (the heaviest)were pro gear.;P But I did buy the movers (save the driver) a coulple beers when they were thru (Hey they were Germans and they spent 3 1/2 days packing our crap)

Anyway I'm in the process of building a 15'L X 12'H built-in bookcase addition to accommodate the many books in the 'Hause of Greyhawks'.

Greyhawk is a notorious book collector (among other things, ugh) and at times (many) I just want him to own a fricken library card.

His collection (and about a dozen of mine) covers about everything, History, Western, War, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Horror, Murder Mysteries, Literary Fiction, Non-Fiction, Religious, Political, Reference books, I think the only thing we don't have is trashy Romance novels.

Greyhawk isn't much into the Political books, however we get quite an array of them to review (I don't know why, he never does). Needless to say when family with opposing views visit, OR people from his unit, they go under the bed.

Saves from unnecessary confrontations or speculations.

[Linda]

We are eclectic here as well. A good many books on our shelves are related to music/music education (hubby's major, BA and currently Doctoral studies). My passion seems to be collecting bible studies and Christian literature...but do not forget the Harry Potter series and Twilight. I've got a great many Ann Rule (true crime) novels as well. We have some heavy reading as well....

[Sam Stevens]

I just saw that Sara Horn, founder of Wives of Faith, is giving away copies of her new ebook on Monday. The book is called the Busy Book and in it she shares different ways a military spouse can stay busy during a deployment. Ideas are found in one of four areas: physical, mental, social and spiritual. She even out web links to help with the 99 ways,

All you have to do is add a comment to her blog, telling her one way you stay busy during a deployment. You do not have to currently be in a deployment to enter the contest or to win. Tell your friends! http://faithatthefront.blogspot.com/

[tankerswife]

I LOVE trashy novels. Although I'll read just about any of them, I have my favorite authors and genres. I also love the Tom Clancy books and others like that. DH loves sci-fi, like Jim Butcher and Steven King.

We've been reading Jim Butcher's Dresden series together. I'll read a book or two and then ship them to him. He reads at a much slower pace than I do. I'm a voracious reader of just about anything. I usually can read 400-500 pages in a night. But it's been fun to read a series together, from opposite sides of the world.

[dizzylizzie]

ok so i feel like an oddity here. my bookshelf consists of computer geek stuff.

A+,Net+,Sec+, CCNA, Java,Linux programming, Win server 2003, exchange server 2003 & various other MSCE books, XP Pro,Active Server pages, Mac repair bible, and even a hacking for dummies book. add to that my graveyard of PC towers in various states of repair/disrepair and piles of hardware/scavanged spare parts laying around, i can only imagine what the movers would think. i mean, it may look like i'm trying to build my own super-network meant to take over the planet of silly humans but really, my friends just like cheap labor.

i've also got several time life & better homes and gardens on gardening & landscaping.
hubs reads Clive Cussler novels and likes to do the crossword puzzles in the sunday paper so we have good size stack of half done newspaper puzzles laying around collecting dust while he sits in korea eating sushi.

[AussieCoyote]

I moved over a year ago and most of my books are still in boxes due to an acute shortage of bookshelves.
There's not much variety in my reading material though - after a degree in Middle Eastern politics and a deployment to Iraq my house looks like a one-stop shop for megalomania. I recently packed up some of my favourites to send to my man in preparation for my move. All was going well until I looked at what I had packed and then had visions of TSA in conniptions ready to arrest me on terrorism grounds. Out came the Quran, the innumerable histories of Saudi Arabia and dissertations on Hizballah and Muqtada Sadr. In went the bible, a copy of Tuesdays with Morrie and other PC-appropriate books...