Two related news stories caught my attention this week. One was entitled "They Can't Read: [Hoover Institution Senior Fellow} Victor Davis Hanson Shares Horror Stories That Drove Him Out Of University." The other piece is called "Gen Z are arriving to college unable to even read a sentence – professors warn it could lead to a generation of anxious and lonely graduates."

As the titles imply, there are entire cohorts of young people emerging from public education functionally illiterate. The latter article begins: "As Gen Z ditch books at record levels, students are arriving to classrooms unable to complete assigned reading on par with previous expectations. It's leaving colleges no choice but to lower their expectations. One shocked professor has described young adults showing up to class, unable to read a single sentence."

The crisis of literacy goes back decades, arguably generations. "Why Johnny Can't Read" was first published in 1955 and drew national attention to the failures of the "look-say" method of teaching (as opposed to phonics) that signaled the beginning of the end for literacy.

We are so obsessed with books in our family that this hits home ... hard.

We've also had lively discussions in our household about the issue. Is reading even "necessary" in our modern society? Clearly illiteracy isn't an insuperable handicap for everyone. History is rife with brilliant people who succeeded despite their inability to read. Today's younger generations are clearly succeeding even though reading is no longer a priority.

I guess what I find distressing is our modern culture seems to actively cultivate functional illiteracy. Children are surrounded by screens instead of books. They're encouraged to watch videos about something rather than reading about it. Parents don't model reading; they model viewing. Artificial intelligence is poised to take the need to read away from us. Children no longer grow up with the expectation that reading is not only educational, but fun. University professors are reaping the rewards of this change in attitude and ability.

Recently a reader related a frustrating experience with an AI bot and asked rhetorically, "You'll do better finding your answers in a book somewhere. What will we do when books are gone?"

An excellent question. We're on a personal mission in our family not to let that happen. Let's hope future generations are able to overcome their illiteracy.

I'm sure you've heard the term "honey-do project," referring to a project a husband does for his wife to make some aspect of the home easier to handle. Well, Don just did one for me.

This is our antique hoosier cabinet. Don and I bought it as newlyweds and it's my favorite piece of furniture we own. We put a little lamp (which has a tiny bulb in it) and keep it on as a sort of night light.

Since moving into our current home, I've been storing my cookbooks on top.

While it's otherwise a fine place to store the cookbooks, there's one major problem: I'm short. The hoosier is tall. So whenever I needed a cookbook, I had to use a step stool.

This is nothing unusual. This house is made for giants. It seems everything is juuuuust out of reach for a shortie like me.

So finally I asked Don if he could make me a shelf for the cookbooks in a kitchen corner underneath the cabinet.

And, dear man that he is, he did. At first I was just thinking of a shelf on brackets, but he thought the load of books would be too much weight on the wall, so instead he made a stand-alone shelf.

Here it is, fitted under the cabinet. I couldn't put the cookbooks on it right away because the glue had to dry.

Here are the cookbooks, installed in their new home.

Honestly, this is the first time in over 20 years I've had the cookbooks within easy reach! Even in our old home, the cookbooks were stored in a cabinet nook near the stove that was hard to access simply because they were juuuust a bit too high for me to reach, especially the upper shelf.

So having easily accessible cookbooks is a luxury indeed!

I cleaned off the top of the hoosier and moved a couple of pretty-but-functional items there instead: the coffee grinder and the butter churn.

What a honey-do project!

When Younger Daughter (who, as you know, is in the Navy) was home visiting us last May, one of the things she did was sort and inventory her extensive collection of books.

We moved out of our old house while she was overseas in Japan, so we boxed all the books she had left behind in her bedroom. We made sure to identify her books, as we had thousands of our own books boxed up as well.

When we moved into our new home, Younger Daughter's books got stored up in the new loft Don built above his "man cave." Last May, she was just heading for her European duty station and didn't know what her living situation would be. So she sorted her books and labeled some for quasi-permanent storage with us, but a large selection she wanted shipped overseas whenever she got her own place.

She's now settled into her apartment where she'll be for several years, and asked for her books. In late December, I shipped her the first batch, which she just received. But she had nowhere to put them ... yet.

Because one wall of her apartment is an enormous blank white space, and because she's not allowed to paint it a different color, she came up with a clever idea.

She went to IKEA (of course there's an IKEA not far away from her!) and purchased enough bookshelves to fit the entire length of the wall. Then, to add a dramatic splash of color, she's papering the inside of each bookshelf with wallpaper, as well as painting the shelves a darker color to offset the stark white walls.

She admits the blue-and-yellow theme may look strange, but I have a feeling she'll be able to pull it off (unlike me, both our daughters developed excellent taste in interior design).

Meanwhile, I boxed up the remainder of her library and shipped it off to her.

She said she'll send pictures when the whole thing is complete. As I told the nice lady in the post office who was processing the customs forms, there are worse things to have than kids who are crazy about their books.

Older Daughter caught wind of a library sale being held in a tiny nearby town. We made plans to go, though to be honest we didn't expect much. The town is small and isolated. How big could the sale be?

While we made plans to arrive at the opening of the sale, we didn't anticipate much competition. After all, how many other bibliophiles were there in this small and isolated town?

We were happily surprised on both counts. Not only was the selection extremely large for a library that size...

...but it seemed every homeschooling family for miles around had arrived to pick over the books. Yes! It was wonderful to see so many kids. (As we were checking out, a little boy belonging to the family ahead of us was clutching a small but old book against his chest protectively, very proud of the fact that he had paid for it with his own money. I don't know what the book was, but the kid looked over the moon.)

Ahem, I came home with a carton-full. Total cost? Eight dollars.

It's just so hard to resist a library sale.

Today, July 1, I started NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which holds a July "camp" for interested participants.

The registration feature appears to be malfunctioning, so my participation is informal. But since I got approval on my latest Amish romance synopsis, the push is on to get it written, tally ho!

Meanwhile, last week I completed another project: Taking care of the hundreds of author copies Harlequin so generously sends to its authors. I had boxes and boxes and boxes of books stacked in the barn. So I pulled them all onto the porch and started sorting.

I counted out twenty copies of each title...

...and put them in a tote to protect them from mice and moisture. This will go back out to the barn.

During this process, I learned I was (mostly) out of author copies for my first two books, but I had an overabundance of the rest.

There's been a lot of chatter on the Love Inspired author's forum about other writers facing a similar issue: What to do with so many books? Someone suggested donating them to a Christian charity called Prison Book Project. I called and spoke to a representative and explained my interest in sending them the spare books, and she was thrilled. Apparently women's fiction, especially Christian fiction, is in raging demand.

So I boxed up the remaining books and shipped them out.

I see this as a win-win. We get more floor space in the barn, and some women prisoners get books to read.

Back when I was in high school in the late 1970s, I purchased a copy of the international best-selling book "Gnomes."

This was written by Wil Huygen and beautifully illustrated by the incomparable artist Rien Poortvliet. The book is charming through and through.

I've kept this book all these years, but hadn't re-read it in quite a while. Recently I went through it again and was just as charmed as when I was a teen.

But one thing in particular caught my eye. Toward the back of the book, Huygen relates some legends about how gnomes helped various people at various times.

Here is the introduction to Legend #4:

"In Kharkov, people enjoy telling this story. Just outside their own lived a certain Tatjana Kirillovna Roeslanova. She was seventy years old but still had a pretty, straight nose and shining white hair which she parted in the middle. She had been exiled from Moscow by the secret police; her husband was dead and she was without resources. Nobody was allowed to employ her, so to make a livelihood she bought a cow with money from secret friends.

Then she did something that Soviet authorities prefer not to see, but tolerate through necessity. She supplied ten houses on the outskirts of the town with milk – they would, otherwise, have had to travel so far for their milk that it would no longer be fresh when they returned. Tatjana lived in a shack in the middle of a small vegetable garden and spent the days grazing her cow along the roadside.

There are hundreds of thousands of these one-cow businesses in Russia. The economic consequences of removing them would be so great that the government turns a blind eye. ..."

The text then launches into the story of how gnomes helped Tatjana during a time of particular hardship.

Keep in mind this book was written and illustrated in the late 1970s by a Dutch author and a Dutch artist, long before political correctness existed and wokeness was a factor. It was also long before the Soviet Union broke apart. As such, these European men were able to give their clear and truthful views of the reality of what life was like under communism in the Soviet Union, and how it impacted lowly peasants such as Tatjana.

Lest we forget, the Soviet Union routinely reduced otherwise middle-class citizens into lives of abject poverty for any deviation from the government-approved narrative. They additionally punished anyone who tried to help the displaced. Remember, "She had been exiled from Moscow by the secret police; her husband was dead and she was without resources. Nobody was allowed to employ her." What I infer from this is her husband was killed for his resistance to communism, and Tatjana was additionally crushed by being unemployable thanks to Soviet diktat. This is the reality of what things were like in Soviet Russia.

Interestingly, it seems "Gnomes" is due to be reissued this coming September. I'd like to point out both the author and illustrator are both deceased and therefore have no editorial control over the contents of the book. I wonder how "updated" the contents will be, and whether the legend of Tatjana Kirillovna Roeslanova will remain intact, or will be rewritten to spin communism as benign and positive.

But for now, I salute  Huygen and Poortvliet. They knew what communism was like for the peasants, and made sure this legend reflected that reality. It's a pity the younger generations are being spoon-fed propaganda and not being told the truth about the horrors of communism.

Recently a reader left a comment about the photo below as follows: "You teased me with the beautiful, sunlit photo of what looks like two sets of books. What are the two sets? You had previously mentioned collecting the Harvard Classics. I have been seeing some of them, various editions, periodically, in my local (Florida) library’s used books-for-sale section, usually for 50 cents each. If you’re still looking for any volumes, and have a post office box (I’m sure you don’t want to give out your address) I can keep an eye out for them."

Yes, one of those sets is my beloved Harvard Classics, purchased for $1/each when our old library was upgrading. (Thank you for the very sweet offer, but I have the complete set.)

The other (more colorful) set of books is the collection of "Britannica Great Books," purchased many years ago at a different library sale for – are you ready for this? – $3. Not $3 for each book, but $3 for the complete set. Score!

Then the other day, a shaft of sunlight hit the books and I just thought they were so pretty. Heavens, I do love our books.

But apparently I'm not the only one. I stumbled across an article recently called  "We’re drowning in old books. But getting rid of them is heartbreaking" that discusses the sorrow older people feel when it comes to downsizing their personal home libraries (an act of love so their heirs won't be forced to deal with them). One woman said, "The idea of getting rid of these books made me nauseous." Another said, "Constitutionally, I am unable to throw a book away. To me, it’s like seeing a baby thrown in a trash can. I am a glutton for print. I love books in every way."

I'm afraid these are sentiments I entirely understand.

The article explains, "What to do with old books is a quandary that collectors, no matter what age, eventually face – or leave to their heirs who, truly, do not want the bulk of them. Old volumes are a problem for older Americans downsizing or facing mortality, with their reading life coming to a close. ... Book lovers are known to practice semi-hoardish and anthropomorphic tendencies. They keep too many books for too long, despite dust, dirt, mold, cracked spines, torn dust jackets, warped pages, coffee stains and the daunting reality that most will never be reread. Age rarely enriches a book."

(Speak for yourself. I re-read my books all the time.)

The article adds, "Most people haven’t a clue as to how many books they own. Possibly, they don’t want to know. Roberts [the owner of a used bookstore] routinely make house calls to owners claiming to own 2,000 books only to discover a quarter of that."

Well, in our heyday we had about 5,000 books in our home, including the libraries of both our kids. Two thousand books? Pfft. That's nothing.

"With the exception of rare and antiquarian collectors, few owners know the monetary value of their holdings. Invariably, they overvalue them," remarks the article.

Um, none of our books have any value whatsoever ... except to us. My copy of Jane Goodall's "In the Shadow of Man," signed by her in 1980? Absolutely stinkin' priceless.

While both our daughters have become avid readers, they both have their own tastes in literature, as they should. When the time comes to disperse our library, it's doubtful either kid will want the vast majority of the volumes on our shelves.

But that's okay. They can have a great big bonfire with our books if they want to, then use our shelves to house their own collection. But in the meantime, I'm not getting rid of 40+ years' worth of books just because we're getting older.

As the article concludes, "[One booklover] makes no excuses. She says: 'There are millions of books in the world. Twelve thousand is nothing. It's like having a pound of salt from the ocean.' So she will hold on to each and every one of them."

Preach it, sister.

Being a book fiend, I'm always attracted to photos of large collections of volumes.

I also enjoy book-themed images, like these benches:

I collect links of book-themed stuff as I come across them.

For example, here's an article entitled "Growing Up Surrounded by Books Could Have Powerful, Lasting Effect on the Mind" in which the writer notes, "Research suggests that exposure to large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency in three key areas" – literacy, numeracy (using mathematical concepts in everyday life), and information communication technology (using digital technology to communicate with other people, and to gather and analyze information). [It's worth noting the latter benefit has entirely bypassed me. I still don't know how to text, and I'm not entirely sure what an "app" is.]

The above article continues, "The research team was interested in this question because home library size can be a good indicator of what the study authors term 'book-oriented socialization.' ... More books in the home was linked to higher proficiency in the areas tested by the survey. ... Further research is needed to determine precisely why exposure to books in childhood fosters valuable skills later in life, but the study offers further evidence to suggest that reading has a powerful effect on the mind."

Another short article I stumbled across is entitled "How to Display Your Books Like a More Sophisticated Adult." Personally I didn't find this very helpful, but then I'm usually intrigued by book quantity, not style.

I do confess, however, a weakness for book-themed interior décor books. I have several:

(Of this collection, the center top book – "At Home with Books" by Estelle Ellis – is the best.)

Now here's a fascinating article: "Book of Lost Books Discovered in Danish Archive": "Christopher Columbus may have explored oceans, but his illegitimate son, Hernando Colón, explored the mind. In the 16th century, he amassed somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 books, part of a pie-in-the-sky effort to collect 'all books, in all languages and on all subjects, that can be found both within Christendom and without.' As part of this ambitious endeavor, he commissioned an entire staff of scholars to read the books and write short summaries for a 16-volume, cross-referenced index. Called the Libro de los Epítomes, it served as a primitive sort of search engine. Now, researchers have found one of those lost volumes, a precious key to many books lost to history." Yowza!

Other cool book stuff: How about a vending machine that dispenses a random book for $2.00?

Here's another book vending machine, this one in Romania.

Or what about a train station in Paris with a machine that prints out short stories to read while you wait for a train?

Another version:

How cool is this? How would you like your own personal traveling bookstore?

Then of course, there are photo collections of the world's most beautiful libraries:

• Here

• Here

• Here

• Here

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

There are also extraordinary bookstores, such as this one in Buenos Aires.

And how about a few random items?

Older Daughter enjoys participating in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge.

I once put up a post about something called Silent Book Clubs, which I still think is a spiffy idea.

One of the more charming trends is that of Little Free Libraries. A woman in Coeur d'Alene built one of these in an old tree stump. I always regret not going by to see it when we lived closer.

I've also written about using books as props, often termed "credibility bookshelves" in the age of remote work and Zoom calls. Shallow as this may seem on the surface, I figure being surrounded by books can only lead to good things.

How about this collection of photographs of early bookmobiles?

And finally, a phenomenon I caught wind of which I think is just the coolest thing: Bookstores you can rent for date nights or even weddings.

Book-themed info is almost as much fun to collect as books!