Quote:
Originally Posted by DuskyRose
Yes! I spent some teenager years where the local library was a person's house with a couple of rooms of donated books. Wasn't a lot to choose from, but I did read every Perry Mason they had, which was quite a few.
Then years later, as a military wife, had to pack up family stuff to move to Japan for three years. Weight limit meant I couldn't bring all my books, so donated them. Packed up *one* box, and sent them off. Nine months later, when receiving the household boxes of our good from military storage, guess what *one* box had gotten wet and molded?
Not one was salvageable. So, I tried to make the best of two on-base bookstores, (neither of which ever carried much Scifi, Fantasy, or Mystery, and mostly couldn't afford anyway,) and the on-base library. They meant well, but they were all donations no one wanted to pack back up to take with them on the next move, and very few were in a series. Tons of children's books, though, which we greatly appreciated.
And, to top it all off, the year we arrived was the year when catalogs stopped shipping overseas. For anything.
The book starvation was real. And deep. And seeing my grandparents downsize and give up their prized possessions as their living quarters got smaller and smaller didn't help.
So, I latched onto ebooks, and if I end up in a nursing home someday, with nothing but a couple of drawers full of clothing and my family pictures, I'll have my eReader or tablet, full of my whole library, to keep me company.
And I'm lucky enough to have two great kids who'll see to that. Come what may.
|
I lived in Japan as a kid. The only show on TV, in English, was The Defenders. Most Americans stopped what they were doing when it came on and would find a TV. I used to trade comic books with the Japanese kids. I could get comic books on base, but there wasn't a large selection of kids' books I wanted to read.
Apache