Finding Gold In My Parent’s Library
Two weeks ago, I went with my family to my parent’s house to have lunch. While waiting around I decided to scout around their library.
A big thing with lots of shelves that have been there since we moved to the house in the early 90s.
Now, I’ve always had a vague idea of the kind of books we had there. Mostly textbooks me or my brothers used for school, encyclopedias my mom used to get for us, dictionaries, and so on. My mom gave away some of the textbooks to friends and family that needed them. But on the top of the library, there were still some really good books.
Some were novels that I had never cared about before, but after a quick survey, I found some old classics that deserved my attention.
Most of the authors I follow talk a lot about the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, which is why I ordered Crime and Punishment to give it a go. To my surprise, there was a hardcover copy of The Brothers Karamazov in my parent’s library. Another curious find was The 3 Musketeers, but the best was the two tomes of The Count of Montecristo.
My mom mentioned getting the books from my grandfather, having read them herself a few times. She offered them to me and I obviously accepted.
I really loved the movie, even if I knew the book was probably a million times better. During my usual search on Amazon, I added the books to my wishlist to get them at some point. But now that I have them in my possession it was time to start reading.
The first thing that caught my attention was the first page of the book with the title. It had my grandfather’s name along with a date: “July 26, 1967”.
I’ve never been a particularly nostalgic person, nor was I really close to any of my grandparents. But I remembered reading an article explaining how every scratch, every stain, every folded page, had a story surrounding it. Now, I found myself thinking about my grandfather enjoying the content of these pages, my mom after him, and now me following in their footsteps.
Very much enjoying the ride so far and I’m very glad I decided to take the time to look for these little golden nuggets in plain sight.
Have you ever found something like that? A book, a photo, something that sends you back to a different time a place? Would love to hear about it!
