Who will read my books when I die?

So many much loved and often read, from my childhood onwards are in the bookcase. So much learned from them, so many dreams and other worlds to travel through.

In the busy day and age, with TV documentaries and stories, will they be gathered and dumped in a Salvo bin? Or set fire to in a searing bonfire? Or carefully looked through and read and, as I have so many times, shed a tear at a gentle, soft ending?

I wonder whether the granddaughters have ever opened a book to read for pleasure. The world gains its entertainment from instant TV or series, no knowledge from pages.

I watched a woman on a TV quiz program last night miss out on $50,000 because she didn’t know which early governor of Australia was overthrown during the Rum Rebellion – she was about 30 and supposedly well-educated.

Obviously had never read Mutiny on the Bounty, or even Sara Dane.

Ah Sara Dane, a piece of Australian history so beautifully written, we learn without knowing we are, effortlessly, and when, one day, when we stand at the TV podium and get asked which early governor of Australia was overthrown during the Rum Rebellion, we will throw our arms in the air, shout William Bligh and run off screaming with a 50-thousand-dollar cheque.

Well, perhaps not, but every book worthy of being placed in the bookcase has given us pleasure, whether with laughter, sadness or information. Those that did make it. The ones that often are discarded after two chapters, you know them, you think who wrote this trash, and they make their way either to the local Vinnies or the rubbish tin.

But who will love mine when I am gone?

Will the family discard them? If so I do hope to the aforementioned Vinnies, so that some other person will open their pages and disappear into another world,  like Scarlett O’Hara wondering “What  shall I do?”,  Anne Elliot in Persuasion, pining over Frederick Wentworth, little Rosa Parks, her act of defiance on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama changing history. 

I hope so.