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5Things: bookcase edition

// April 11th, 2006 // Personal

Some people may actually remember when I started the 5Things meme. It was meant to be a regular deal but slipped through the gaps created by over pressure and work related apathy.

Well, more than a year after the first one – here’s the second one (this time with no promises to keep it regular!)

5Things you simply must have on your book case

The Scout Handbook

I don’t think they issue this to Scouts anymore and I picked my copy up at a car boot in the UK. Basically, the handbook is a fantastic resource for anybody (Scout or not) who has an interest in camping, hiking, navigating or doing general out doorsy stuff in a Scouty way.

It includes info on first aid, signaling, sailing, camping, bivvying, cooking, flying, navigation with maps, without maps, in the air, on the sea and on the land and, of course, a shed load of stuff about knots. It’s a fantastic book just to dip into for 5 minutes and will normally teach you something new.

Starship Troopers

It took me over 3 years to source a copy of this (for less than £25 or so). Totally unlike the movie it tells the same story but with much more subtlety. Of course it was banned because the censors got the wrong end of the stick but it sits up there with 1984 and A Brave New World for a bleak, humbling view of a potential future.

A number of very small books

I don’t know why but I seem to maintain a collection of very small books. These include, Milton’s Poems (vol. 11), the Little Book of Hugs (which I think is actually my sisters), Selections from Wordsworth (presented to my mum in 1965), Easy Domestic Homeopathy (which I used to thin was quite amusing before I understood anything about the subject as it prescribes poison for most ailments), The little book of calm at work (which has been thrown across the office more times than I care to count) and my fave, the little book of Abuse which has some cracking caustic comments you’d never use in a million years (e.g. “Halt, Gene Police – Get Out of the Pool” and “Nice dress … are you hoping to slim into it?)

I realise that these are multiple items but they always sit together in a pile because the won;t stand up anywhere and hey! Who’s meme is this?

A bottle of whiskey

Something of a tradition. I’m sure if you look at your bookcase you’ll see a perfect whiskey hiding place. Not that it’s actually hidden, it’s just that between the vertical’s of the spines of books it seems to blend in. It’s a great place to keep that special bottle of something.

A pot full of coppers

As in money, not police. Well I need somewhere to store the damn shrapnel that comes with every cash transaction.

So what do you have on your bookcase? And as you can see it doesn’t have to be limited to books…

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5Things isn’t meant to be a proper Meme, more a kick start for bloggers who don’t have anything to write on that day.