New Bookshelf

The Bookshelves Abound series continues with the New Bookshelf. This one of the five bookshelves on the upstairs landing. It sits between the Academic Bookshelf and my Writer’s Bookshelf.

The New Bookshelf is where I put all my new books when I first acquire them. It’s perhaps the most overloaded

Games

The top two shelves of the new bookshelf has board games on it. Some of these are very old, I started playing Panzer Blitz & Panzer Leader when I was at university (1989-92). Most of the others have been acquired in 1990s, although there are some recent acquisitions, notably Shogun and Settlers of Catan.

Periodicals

There are two journals on these shelves. The one that you can see most of (red with white trim) is the Journal of Operational Research. I’ve been a member of the Operational Research Society for some time, you might recall the tome on the academic bookshelf last week! The other periodical on the new bookshelf is a little harder to spot. It is the journal of Wargames Developments, also known as the nugget. There’s a link between the two, but it is a slim one, both societies have an interest in simulations.

New Books

The new bookshelf is double-banked on the middle three shelves. As I buy new books they tend to migrate to the top of the stairs for shelving, and this is the first proper bookshelf at the top of the stairs. I try to keep my book buying habit under control, but I sometimes succumb in a charity shop. Other times a project will suggest itself and I will deliberately acquire books for research.

1689

The second to bottom shelf is one such collection, for my 1689 project. Not all of those books are unread, nor new to me. I’ve deliberately scoured shelves and brought together all the relevant books onto one shelf so that I can see them. My 1689 project started off as a prospective megagame of the military campaigns in the British Isles after the so-called Glorious Revolution. It seems to have morphed into a book about the military aspects of the coup set in the context of wider European conflict. That’s on hold until June 2017 as I have a degree to finish first…

Lion Comes Home

The very bottom shelf is also a project shelf for games about the post-war colonial draw-down.

Hidden Books

There’s another theme to the new bookshelf, and that’s hidden books. As I mentioned, the shelves are largely double banked, with two rows of books to a shelf. This means a lot of hidden books. Most of those hidden books are in that strange period between news and history. They cover events that I remember, and that people I know were involved in tangentially. There are books on the Cold War, the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the theory of war. They would make a good reading list for a junior officer!

There is also half a shelf of ancient history, mostly republican Rome, but also Graves’ Greek Myths.

Next week will be my writer’s bookshelf, the one with my reference books on writing…