Lidjisabellam

My library began before I was born - I have books that belonged to my maternal grandfather, his mother, and both my grandmothers - and continues to increase - my last accession was June 28, another book about Canada of course. I grew up in a mostly French-speaking small town with no English library or bookstore. I was dependent for books on occasional gifts - Mary Grannan and Lucy Maud Montgomery, mostly - and our pitifully small school library. Boarding school and college had bigger libraries, but finally family members introduced me to Little Classics bookstore in Montreal and the race was on. Probably most of my books were purchased between l954 and the 1980's, when I was able to curb my addiction by transferring my book dependence to our very good county-wide library system.

My passport says I'm an American but you might guess from my booklist I never really left home. American science fiction and Penguin editions of British mysteries, and mostly Anglican theology and church history were the biggest categories in my library until I married, when my Anglophile American husband got turned on to Canadian history and literature as well.
Add, as the years went on, new interests in gardening, ecology, cooking, birds,and eventually a new career in early childhood education - all accompanied by more books. Now I picture my daughter, on the day I die, renting a commercial dumpster and shoveling the contents of my apartment into it. I have managed to send one of my universities two or three cartons of books for their annual Friends of the Library sale each year for the last three, but it gets harder and harder to pick what to let go. I'm hoping that finally cataloguing what remains will help me clear out more.