My family has a rich tradition of purchasing “unusual” books at thrift stores. (Exhibit A: Yoga Tennis by Baba Rick Champion.) One day, my sister, Jenny, made the mistake of mentioning that she had accumulated a surprising number of romance novels featuring nurses in the starring role…and from that moment, whenever anyone came across a new example of the genre, they would purchase it so she could add it to her “collection.”
When Jenny moved to Egypt for a year, I inherited the collection and I’ve been stuck with it ever since. The collection has continued to grow, including specimens from as far away as Cairo, London, and Costa Rica.
There are now 307 unique volumes in the collection.