I spent a month in Dortmund, going through my father's large collection of books. My father was an obsessive collector who left me about 2000 travel guides, coffee-table books, science books and a collection of Playboy magazines.
He had his themes. Ancient Greece, Egypt, England, Italy, North Rhine-Westphalia. And everything else.
At one time, he smuggled piles of new books into his study through the window from our garden.
There is a very good book about obsessive collecting which my father should have read: "Collecting: An Unruly Passion" by Werrner Muensterberger.
When I got tired of looking at so many old books, I browsed the internet for miniatures and games. I found a couple of interesting sites and added them to my collection of favourite links (Herr Zinnlings Links + My Blog List).
Then I got interested in pulp sci-fi and old school space battle games because I met Gilbert. Gilbert is a distant relative who likes to come up with names for space heroes and their opponents. Like "Zador, the dominator of space." Or "Gortak, Zorax, Orlok."
If you share my father's interest and collect out of date travel guides, here is where you can get them: mjb78 (Amazon).
In 50 years Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín will go through my things and ask: why did he collect 28mm pirates? Plague marines? Elves? Ancient greeks? Why did he sculpt and paint 24 naked green monsters? What was wrong with him?
If we were all the same it'd be a very dull world. I'm curious to know if his interests overlapped. North Rhine-Westphalian Playboy magazines perhaps? Sci-fi travel guides?
ReplyDeleteMy fathers' interests were a bit more traditional than you imagine. Traveling + photography = coffee table books with cities in Italy or North Rhein-Westphalia. Playboy magazines + ancient Greece = coffee table books about naked Greek statues.
DeleteMaybe I should start to collect Sci-fi travel guides ...