Bookshelves

Bookshelves. Bookshelves?
We have the bookshelves from IKEA. What is more they are assembled thanks to Nev. Nev spent all day yesterday assembling bookshelves. As he is not a reader himself this is even more remarkable than it might be.
Dad and I have thousands of books between us. I was going to say we 'own' them but I am not sure about that. The books are stored with us. We use them for now. They will be passed on to a future generation.
Perhaps somewhere in the future there will only books on some sort of electronic or other reading device. I think it will take a long time to come. If it does then that generation will lose a great deal. Books are comforting things to have around, not comfortable in the physical sense perhaps, but comforting. You can reach out for a book and touch it. There may be information there, old friends or new ones.
The house really does look more like a library now. I am not sure what the two street 'kids' Sean and Darren would make of it now. They thought it was a library when they came to visit me about eighteen years ago. Dad and I have added to the collection since then.
It is true that Pioneer Books have stopped running those massive second hand book sales but there is still St Vincent de Paul's bookshop, the Save the Children Fund one and the Rotary one - all within close reach.
I am not at all sure my mother would approve. My mother was not really a reader, although she appeared to be a reader. That is not as contradictory as it sounds. She read the occasional light crime novel and would always appear to have a book on the go. It always took her quite a while to read a book, two or three weeks to read something I would read in a night or Dad would read in two or three nights.
I am about to embark on Daniel Everett's book, "Don't sleep, there are snakes." Dad found this fascinating. I think I will too, but for different reasons.