Its got the old book smell...!

     In reinventing myself, I have been pondering doing something I have wanted to do my whole life: collect books.  Not just go down to Barnes & Noble and buy a book, read it and let it sit on the shelf to collect dust.  I mean, no shit, COLLECT books.  We're talking hardcore, first edition hardbacks.  We are talking driving from state to state, digging through used bookstore shelves, searching for that holy grail by a specific author.  We're talking looking up the original printing date to ensure that it is, in fact, a first edition.

     I have always had a love affair with books, so when real people let me down, I've always turned back to books.  My mother said I was reading by the time I was four.  I can remember reading The Thorn Birds at age seven, and then diving into the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at age 8 & 9.  My mother has always been a reader.  My grandmother, god bless her soul, use to take me to the library every week.  This woman would walk out of the library with two paper grocery bags full of books.  She would read them in a week, then take them back for more.  How did she do this, you might wonder?  She read late in the night until 2-3am.  Then she would get up around 6-7am, clean, do chores and start all over again.  I think she was my inspiration for reading.

     So, my gaming group is not meeting this Saturday.  It is a perfect time to start.  I'll get off work early on Friday.  I get paid this weekend.  Which means, I can tool around Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport and maybe even New Orleans looking what I am going to start collecting.  I think I will right down my favorite authors and begin with them: Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Robert R. McCammon, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Robert Jordan, etc. That means I need to make lists of their books, along with the original printing dates for each book so that I can appraise whether I am looking at a first edition or not.  It also means I need to buy a really good bookcase to store them in.  Lot of things to do, only a few days to do them in.

     My life is beginning to goes its own way after everything that happened that last year... I guess that is what needs to happen, as Stevie Nicks sang I need to go my own way...