Dusting the bookshelves reminded me of some rather fanciful intentions we have harbored over the years and of the many contemplated projects that remain, as yet, unaccomplished.

Take a small paperback book titled, “The Training and Care of the Versatile Hunting Dog,” and we’ll show you a dog that isn’t versatile, can’t be trained and will not hunt. So what good is that book?

Or, for that matter, the next one on the shelf called “The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace.” We must have forgotten to build one and probably should throw the book into the wood stove.

From one end to the other, the shelf has dozens of how-to manuals we have collected for some strange reason, figuring we would one day get around to tackling some of our plans. There’s a book on woodcarving, another on repairing and restoring antique furniture, and a pruning handbook from 1952 that tells all about the shaping of trees, shrubs and vines.

There is a silly 62-page guidebook on “Parties and How to Give Them,” but when you think about the 1940 copyright date, why not be reading about card parties and masquerade games?

I can’t understand why we have the “Home Tanning and Leather Making Guide” by A. B. Farnham, who writes in gory detail about preparing hides and skins for market.

Nor does the “Collector’s Pocket Book of Glass” make a lick of sense, since we have no Scandinavian or Russian glass, but we do have a rather large container of sea glass gathered from the Sand Cove.

This time of year, perhaps “Gunsmithing at Home” would come in handy, but we doubt anyone around here would take the time to follow the step-by-step instructions … lock, stock and barrel.

There are several boat-building books on the shelf, one by Howard Chapelle, which is a complete handbook of wooden boat construction, and another manual published by Marine Publishing Co. in Camden and written by Robert M. Steward in 1970, which offers intricate illustrations of the boat-building process.

Naturally, we have the three Foxfire volumes and various books on “How to Collect Stamps” or U.S. coins. We have multiple books on gardening and the how-tos on soil preparation.

There is a book for “Successful Winemaking at Home,” written by one H.E. Bravery, interestingly enough, but the book that absolutely stumps us is “Raising Earthworms for Profit,” written by Earl B. Shields in 1959.

How that got on the shelf is a mystery, given the fact we live on ledge around here, not soil, where no earthly earthworm would profit.