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OUR PRIVATE LITTLE LIBRARY
Since I can remember, there has always been books in my house: in all bedrooms, hallways, in the laundry, under the stairs, on the tables in the sitting room, at our bedside, in the bathroom ... I never asked if it was a normal amount of books we had, I always thought that everyone was the same. And what a large repertoire of books we have! Encyclopedias ranging from animals and boats up to weapons and wars; old and modern dictionaries in Spanish and other languages, almanacs since before I was born, fantasy books, children books, reference books, novels, magazines both of social and specialized topics, books we used in elementary school and many more. It was normal to see my dad get a new one almost every weekend, for my brother and I to ask for money for a new one and every time we go to USA, for us to stop at our favorite bookstore. It's a family liking that drawn from our grandparents on both sides and it´s still common for us to share and exchange books. In my family books are sacred, we don´t scratch or bend them, we don´t mistreat or stain them, and especially in my case, all those that we use a lot, such as school books, are lined. Not that anything bad will occur if something happens to them, it's just a habit. We lament when a book is defoliated and feel frustration and terror when we see the new trend of cutting the leaves of books to form a cavity and keep things inside. We do not tend to lend books outside of our family, and not because we´re selfish! But we understand that not everyone feels the same love and affection towards them and our ways of taking care of books can be extremists ... we´re avoiding getting angry. Of course we lend books, in my case, before handing them I make them a small comment saying, "Take care of it with your life". As every individual in this world we have different taste in books, but sometimes, it happens, that there may be the possibility that we fancy the same book. While my mom likes health and self-help types of books, my brother likes philosophy and history; I like mystery, fantasy, action and history, and my dad likes almost everything. It might not be proper to have the amount of books we have and that our care is greatly exaggerated, but it’s a luxury we enjoy; someday we'll have to either giving them away or sell them to a library, but in the meantime while we can, we will continue to increase our collection of books in OUR PRIVATE LITTLE LIBRARY.
