Searching for good living books out in the wild requires equal parts skill and chance. Success rate is boosted by knowledge and experience. A working knowledge such as a continually growing mental list of quality authors and series and publishers, the ability to recognize book spine symbols that designate vintage or modern book series or trusted publishers, even a visual memory of book spine art and fonts will aid when your eyes are scouring shelf after shelf of used books. Being willing to kneel, squat, crawl, dig, and crane your neck in uncomfortable positions is a must. Frequent practice of these skills, and continuing to build good book general knowledge, greatly helps boost your success rate when on the hunt for familiar books.

When it comes to discovering the new-to-you book or author, it takes a little more time and effort. You must be willing to slow down your searching, and READ. Take your time when pursuing the stacks and shelves, let your eyes linger long enough to consider the titles, not just scan them. Pull a book out and start investigating with focus. Dust jackets and the back cover of paperbacks are a great place to begin. If you are drawn in by those, then you know someone has done their job correctly! That is precisely the desired outcome of the book’s publisher! But don’t stop there, examine a bit further by reading the first page, and one to a few random pages inside the book.

Does this book spark any connections? Is this a topic or subject of interest? Have the sentences you read draw you in and make you wonder about more? If it is fiction skim a few passages with quotation marks denoting conversations of characters. Do these characters come alive? seem real? could you put yourself in their place? are you interested in them? are they intriguing, familiar? Are they shallow or deep? Read a few non-conversation sentences, is the setting plausible, is the commentary comfortable or gripping? If it is a non-fiction, is it dry? spewed with data and facts instead of narrative? is your interest piqued on a topic you are unfamiliar with? or is it a familiar topic discussed well? Does this book make you think of a good known book? or author? Again ask yourself, does this book spark any connections?

If you still are interested, definitely curious, but are not quite ready to commit, do a GoodReads search. I usually start with three star reviews, right in the middle. Before the time of handheld computers capable of doing internet search for reviews or links to trusted online living book lists and recommendations, this phone-a-friend was not possible. Back in those olden days, I trusted more on that growing working knowledge, mental pro/con checklists, and instinct. And good instinct, grown from past experience, is living-book-finding gold.

I have discovered some of my most favorite books and authors this way, such as Stephen Lawhead and Wide Wide World by Susan Warner, and Watchman Nee.

Recently I came across an unknown-to-me gem of a book. Words on Fire, by Jennifer A. Nielsen.

This young adult historical fiction introduced me to a place, time, and event in history when a people literally risked life and limb to save books. During the late 1800’s, Russian Cossack soldiers occupying Lithuania had taken over the government, the schools, outlawed the native language and dress, confiscated and burned all of the books. They were attempting to erase an entire culture. The Lithuanians conformed, to live. But there were a few brave souls who looked to the future, a hopeful future when they could once again be their own people. How did they attempt to save their culture? by saving ideas, and books held those ideas. The books they managed to save were the last connection to their history, they held the stories and tales of their people. They hid their treasured books in secret rooms, held underground school reading from these books and speaking in their own language, and extremely brave couriers risked their lives transporting books to the far corners of the land.

The heroine is a young girl, age 12. She did not value books. She did not understand their worth. She did not even know how to read. Yet she risked her life to carry books. If that doesn’t tease you to read this book, you have lost the curiosity of the cat my friend!

I picked up this book at a thrift store, read the back cover, and decided to give it a go. I was rewarded for my intuition. It is an EXCELLENT read! This story, this history, has stayed with me. It has given me ammunition to continue my ‘Keeper of the Books’ work in my home and community. My personal library is growing, and I continue to read carefully and selectively every day. I take care of our small church library, building it one book at a time, and I am a part time librarian at our tiny public library. I encourage anyone who comes across this random post to keep on KEEPING BOOKS in your own way. If you have made it this far in this rambling collection of thoughts you must be a reader! You are my people. My wish for you is to find a great book ‘out in the wild’ and to share it with the world.