The Buie Knife

My 'Blook' On My Mother Cited As One of the Best for History Buffs

What a surprise to discover that my blook -- blog plus book -- Teacher of Our Town: Lillian Secrest Buie -- was cited in August 2009 by "Online School" as among the "100 Best Book Blogs for History Buffs: This nonfiction blog will point you to historical books....This blog acts as a 'living memorial' for Lillian Secrest Buie, and it follows her story, her writings, and the book inspired by her life."

Previously, Cheryl Hagedorn of "Blooking Central" wrote a piece about my work, "Living Memorial Becomes Autobiographical Blook." 

A Bookaholic Tries to Detach Himself from Books

"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight." - Robertson Davies

I'm afraid I took this philosophy too much to heart, and have always found it difficult if not impossible to part with books. I guess it was partly the way I was raised. My mother was an English teacher who believed that books represented something eternal, something sacred. Discarding a book, not to mention even the contemplation of burning one, was a terrible thing, if not an unforgivable sin.

But when my mother, upon her death, left me with the task of sorting through and deciding what to do with her collection of 3,000 books, I began to believe that discarding books, even if a sin, was a forgivable one. Trying without success to find a place that would accept sets of encyclopedias from 1930 and 1950 led me to the awful conclusion that I would either have to discard them in a dumpster or burn them myself.

The downstairs of my former home was packed with books, almost wall to wall,