Custom-Built Bookcase for Sale, Low Miles

Today’s guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software and author of the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament, Lexham High Definition New Testament, and the forthcoming Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis.

This would be the heading of my want ad if I were to post one. You see, ten years ago when we bought our house, one of the first personal projects I did was build a custom, floor-to-ceiling bookcase in my new office.

At the time I was regularly buying Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplemental volumes, scholarly commentaries like Word Biblical Commentary, ICC, and the Anchor Bible and whatever else I needed to write my MTS thesis. This bookcase was to be the showpiece of my scholarly man-cave. I even inherited a great leather chair from an aunt-in-law, the kind that was scratched by a cat and isn’t allowed in the living room any more. Life was great—until something happened.

The “something” was Logos Bible Software: Scholar’s Gold. It completely changed the way I used my library, and more importantly how I spent my book budget. Here is a picture of my new office. My library now resides almost exclusively on my laptop, and I study and write in my rocking chair, not in my man-cave.

My wife and I are taking a finance class to refresh the lessons learned from Larry Burkett. We were challenged to sell off things of value that we don’t use anymore. When I heard this, I got really sad. Why? Because the first thing that came to mind was my collection of books. I realized I had two collections: the Logos collection on my laptop that I use almost every day, and the paper one sitting on my custom-made bookcase in my man-cave. It has been collecting dust for several years now, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone in there to grab a book.

I am taking all the books that I now (or soon will) have in Logos—the doubles—and am selling off the paper copies. The proceeds are being reinvested in—you guessed it—Logos books. So many great new titles are coming out from Baker and Zondervan and Continuum that it just makes good sense to consolidate my investment.

One last thing remains: getting an Apple device so that I can read on-the-go without my laptop using our iPhone Bible app. My birthday is just around the corner if anyone is interested!