I enjoyed the Maximum Leader’s link on the book collecting habit. oth Mike and I are inveterate bibliophiles. My wife requires me to hand over my wallet before she lets me go into a used book store.

My wife and I live in a century-old two over two farmhouse. It is cramped and genteely collapsing around our family. But I love the dining room. The previous owners installed built-in bookcases around two entire walls. It houses almost half of my books and I love being able to pluck a book off the shelf for a quick ten minute read.

When Mike and I visited Seward’s house and Sagamore Hill, I returned and smugly told my wife that since both of these great men had bookcases in every room of the house, she should let me install a bookcase in every room of our house.

She looked at me, rolled her eyes and said “look around.”

We have a bookcase in every room of the house.

At the very least, I explain to Mrs. Smallholder, my vice runs to books and not booze, drugs, or hookers. She might sometimes think a crack whore addicition would be cheaper.

Even bookcases have an emotional claim on your Minister of Agriculture. My daughter’s bedroom has two bookcases; one made by her Maternal grandfather and the other built by a paternal great-grandfather from scrap wood left over at the Rockford Moose Club where he checked coats.

When my grandmother died and the family divided her furniture, we took a bed built by my great-great-great Uncle (who also helped build the benches for an important 1854 meeting in his hometown of Ripon, Wisconsin) and a cheap, mass-produced faux wood bookcase that my father gave her when he got back from Korea in 1954. My wife thinks this bookcase is ugly, and she is right. But it is a part of family history. Even if it had not been a reminder of Vater Smallholder’s overseas adventure, I would still remember it as the place where Grandma kept “Uncle Wiggly” books for the grandchildren.

The bedroom bookcases are mass-produced items; fiberboard white Walmart specials. They date to when my wife and I were in college and will probably be workhorses until we can afford something better - probably about when Jack finishes graduate school.

The Maximum Leader has a great collection of books AND some very nice bookcases. His skilled father-in-law handcrafted a couple of glorious, dark brown edifices. My favorite Maximum Leader bookcase isn’t handcrafted. It’s a mass-produced cheapo bookcase. Perhaps the Maximum Leader would like to tell the story of when someone broke into his apartment and, instead of robbing him, left a bookcase.