[Expendable]

Recently on CriticalPast.com, I came across a curious clip from 1936 of two boys carrying a box up to this Appalachian school house in rural Tennessee where the teacher and other children were waiting. The teacher opens the front of the case - and it's full of books. It was a traveling library (http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675023118_Traveling-Library_appalachian-school_literacy_Committee-to-Save-the-Children), sponsored by the Committee to Save the Children.

You'd also find traveling libraries being delivered to lighthouses like this one (http://www.michiganlights.com/lhlibrary.htm). Every six months, the lighthouse tender ship would bring a new traveling library and take the old one to another lighthouse.

There were many traveling libraries in the US in the 1900's, lending books to distant communities, many run by private individuals and citizen committees with books and transportation donated by publishers and railroads. While some of the cases were plain, some were very well-made, acting as both a traveling case and bookcase. Many held 30-50 books and sometimes magazines and pictures.


So I had to ask myself - what ten(or more) books would you want to share with others? Assume you have copies from used book stores so you're not robbing your personal library.

BONUS - what else would you put in your traveling library? Magazines? Board games? Pictures? Something like Duchamp's Box in a Valise (http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80890)?

[creatorofPreten]

My library would basically be a children's/Christian library since those are the books I have grown up reading. And are the books that I know the best.

1. My favorite non Biblical book, of all time is "Rosa's Quest" by Anna Potter Wright. I have a paperback copy from 1904, and if I had a second less fragile copy I would love to share it.

2. The original Nancy Drew series written by Mildred Wirt Benson, and not the later revised editions, sold now.

3. Judy Bolton Series/ Trixie Belden/ Cherry Ames/Vicki Barr

4. Chronicles of Narnia

5. The original editon of Heidi

6. A series of Unfortunate Events/ Spiderwick Chronicles

7. All books by Frank Peretti

8. I would share my Johnny/June Carter Cash biography section

9. A little Princess, Secret Garden, Baby Island, Caddie Woodlawn, What Katy did, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

10. All books by Louisa May Alcott/ Mary Roberts Rhinehart/Betty Cavanna/ Grace Livingston Hill

11. The Cat Who Books

12 All books by Agatha Christie/ the works of Edgar Alan Poe

13 Pretense by Lori Wick

14. All works by Carolyn Haywood, Beverly Cleary/ the Boxcar children (only the ones written by Gertrude Chandler Warner before her death)

15 Anything published by Moody press before 1950

15. Anything by Margaret Peterson Haddix

16. Star wars: revenge of the Sith (Matthew Stover)

[Expendable]

A small list of fantasy and science fiction to start with.

Fallen Angels by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and Michael Flynn
The Man Who Awoke by Laurence Manning.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelany
Way Station by Clifford Simak
I, Robot by Issac Asimov
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
The Chanur Saga by C. J. Cherryh
The Lark and the Wren by Mercedes Lackey
Slay and Rescue by John Moore

[Sparrow]

1. Great American Ghost Stories, (various writers)
2. Music for Chameleons, by Truman Capote
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. She, by H. Rider Haggard
5. The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
6. Gunga Din, by Rudyard Kipling
7. Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh
8. The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn & Hal Iggulden
9. Baghdad without a Map & Other Misadventures in Arabia, by Tony Horwitz
10. The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine
11. Burmese Days, by George Orwell


I would throw in an old View-Master and several African Safari picture disks... I might also slip in a miniature backgammon set and an old issue of Penthouse.