Your Family and Books

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Lex
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Your Family and Books

Post by Lex »

How many, and what kind of, books, did your family have when you were a kid? And how did it affect what books you read now?

My father had woodworking books and Popular Mechanics magazines. My mother, romance novels and diet books. High culture consisted of the Bible and the Encyclopedia Americana.

This did affect my choice of books, in a strange way. Due to the dearth of reading matter at home, I had to get books from the library, and would read anything I couldn't get at home. Since I read slowly, and checked out too many books at a time, I sometimes couldn't finish them all before they were due. I so longed for the ability to own a book, instead of borrowing it, so I could read it at leisure.

Now I have a room in my house set aside as my library. It has literature (fine and popular), history, religion, social science, current events, mathematics, science and techology (and not just popular expositions), and of course language instruction. But no treatises on woodworking or cheap romances. And I'm already out of shelf space. :D

timeodanaos
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Location: Hafnia, Denmark

Post by timeodanaos »

I come from a home with books. My mother is a classical singer, my father scholar of classical music. Apart from having tonnes of books on music and partitures, they have always had fine literature, Danish and in the case of my father, especially German. I have had access to dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Apples do fall near the tree, and I only lack the intense interest in music history to be the image of my parents in regards to books. Instead, of course, I have the classics!

Some day, when I am perhaps a bit older than 20, I should too like to have a small, private library (no spouses, nor children allowed!)

euripides
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Post by euripides »

Both my mom and dad are crazy readers; we have our own library space in the house, with books lining the walls. My dad was a philosophy major in university so he has LOTS of philosophy as well the classics of western literature. This probably directly affected my reading choices; I do read the same things as my dad: mostly philosophy, history, and the classics. I do have more foreign language (re. Greek, Latin & German) texts than my parents, though, my dad can read French so he has some French literature which I have yet to access in the original.

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