{"id":3149,"date":"2011-05-29T15:42:47","date_gmt":"2011-05-29T20:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=3149"},"modified":"2011-05-29T15:44:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-29T20:44:34","slug":"putting-it-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2011\/05\/29\/putting-it-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting it Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

After three months in my new home, I finally secured a small bookshelf. As someone who has lived most of his life surrounded by books, this was later than I thought it would be, but there are all kinds of things that get in the way of doing what you want to do.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake – starting over is surprisingly expensive, even for one person.<\/p>\n

\"shelf\"<\/center> <\/p>\n

I still have hundreds of books in America, and another three or four dozen here in my apartment. I couldn’t put everything there on the shelf, so I had to make some choices. And I think it says a lot about how I think about things.<\/p>\n

1) Since this is my only shelf, I have to have that ego thing going on where people look at it and are impressed by the books I own. We all have that bit of vanity, right? Hence, my Shakespeare on the middle shelf, my Fowler’s English Usage<\/em> and my fading 3 volume Smith Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology<\/em> on the top. Will I use these books much? Maybe the Fowler’s, but I can get to Shakespeare faster online and the Smith books are great old 19th century library things with tons of errors because even classical history makes progress.<\/p>\n

2) There are books I like having in easy reach. My wife’s book is on the bottom shelf tucked beside Grand Theft Childhood<\/em>, the Art of Game Design<\/em> and Moneyball<\/em>. My collection of the Wargame Research Group’s “Armies and Enemies” series is by my Erich Gruen collection – these two sets are things I actually do turn to from time to time to clarify a point or double check a mental image.<\/p>\n

3) There are two board games on the bottom shelf – Settlers of Catan and Frontline D-Day – though I own more games than that. These ones were in the living room and not the bedroom, so I could put them there lying flat in a carefully planned effort to look totally casual. (The wooden box to the right is all Command and Colors: Ancients stuff. Whoever buys me the Spartan expansion earns my love.)<\/p>\n

4) Plus scattered items that sort of fit but sort of don’t. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms<\/em>, though I know I will never finish it. The Civ Chronicles pack, even though I think the booklet that I contributed to is still in Maryland with a friend. Delbruck and Dodge and Sabin. A book or two on writing non-fiction. Sondheim’s book on lyrics. Historical Baseball Abstract<\/em>. My dear old friend Plutarch. Other stuff.<\/p>\n

It’s hard work to get your first (and so far only) bookshelf looking just right and representing my personality in what really amounts to a footnote. No wall shelves here, no place for my games or music. Just a quick summary.<\/p>\n

And for people who have been asking, yes, I’m doing fine.<\/p>\n

I have a bookshelf and books. So I sort of have the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After three months in my new home, I finally secured a small bookshelf. As someone who has lived most of his life surrounded by books, this was later than I thought it would be, but there are all kinds of things that get in the way of doing what you want to do. Make no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-ON","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3152,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3149\/revisions\/3152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}