Personal Libraries and Life…
Today I was reading Amazon Daily and found a link to an article by Luc Sante, “The Book Collection That Devoured My Life” in the Wall Street Journal. I read through the article and I laughed and I commiserated and I thought, “Here is a kindred spirit.” Here’s two quotes that give a flavor of what I mean:
There’s nothing inert about these shelves, no men’s-club-library or college-chapel somnolence here — it’s a hive of activity, abuzz with rhythms and images and ideas. As for time: I shelve literature chronologically. It’s the way I think, a landscape of hills and ridges and switchbacks marked off by dates, like a cartoon by Saul Steinberg, here rendered almost literal, so that I can see as well as feel the 19th century turning into the 20th, the prewar cascading into the postwar, the spines gradually becoming brighter as the present day approaches.
Over the years I’ve gotten used to the inevitable questions about my accumulation of books. No, I haven’t read all of them, nor do I intend to — in some cases that’s not the point. No, I’m not a lawyer (a question usually asked by couriers, back in the days of couriers). I do have a few hundred books that I reread or consult fairly regularly, and I have a lot of books pertaining to whatever current or future projects I have on the fire, and I have many, many books speculatively pointing toward some project that is still barely a gleam in my eye. I have a lot of books that I need for reference, especially now that I live 40 minutes away from the nearest really solid library. I have some books that exist in the same capacity as the more recondite tools in the chest of a good carpenter — you may not need it more than once in 20 years, but it’s awfully nice to have it there when you do. Primarily, though, books function as a kind of external hard drive for my mind — my brain isn’t big enough to do all the things it wants or needs to do without help.
That’s pretty much our library here in the woods. The closest library is simply a pick up for books requested and the next nearest is 40 or 50 minutes away (sometimes longer depending on traffic). We used to use the library a lot wherever we lived. But even then we bought a lot of books. Even working with SFRevu, Gumshoe Review, and TechRevu, I still buy a lot of books. The three zines don’t cover some of the subjects that I’m extremely interested in: knitting, spinning, fiber related material, textile history, pattern collections, Jane Austen follow-ons, historical romances, psychology (scientific and layperson), and many other things that set my mind on a quest for knowledge or entertainment.
When my husband and I first moved in together, we jokingly told friends that we could never break up because we’d consolidated our libraries. When we married, we said the same thing. People seemed to accept that it was serious because of the books; but then they were also book people.
When we moved to Maryland the first time, a pizza delivery guy looked at the bookshelves spread along every wall and even creating one wall in our tiny apartment and commented that he hadn’t realized this apartment complex had a library. At that time we only had about 3-4,000 books. Every move, we’ve paired down the other household items and with great reluctance gave away unwanted books. Yet, every time we had more and more book boxes to move.
A couple of years ago, we entered all our books into a cataloging program and found quite a few duplicates and books we forgot we’d bought. At that time we had close to 7,000 books in our library. Now that the zines shipping address is my home and we need to store the books for review here before mailing out to the reviewers, we needed more space.
Paul and I have spent some time each month going through our collection and culling those that we think we can do without. Usually, a couple of hours nets us 3-4 books pulled out for sale. The problem is that we pick a shelf and start to go over the books and we reminisce about the book in our hand: when we read it, what was happening in our life at the time, what it meant to us, and so on. It’s hard to give up a friend. The easiest books to cull are the ones we read because everyone else was, and it wasn’t our taste anyway, but we didn’t want to talk about it without reading it first. Also, the reference books that are outdated and we have another recent copy anyway. And books by authors that were trendy, the story was good but we won’t reread it.
The books we’re saving are the ones with too many memories attached to let go right now. The books that changed our lives when we read them, because they spoke to something deep inside. I have two shelves of books that I call my comfort shelf. These books are the ones that I reread. Usually, I reread them when I’m feeling really crappy and I need some good wholesome stories of people doing the right thing because it’s the right thing. The characters get hurt, frightened, and scared but they keep going because they know that is what needs to be done. It perks me up when there aren’t enough spoons in the state to get me moving or keep me moving for the day. I’ve read them so often that I know them nearly by heart. Those authors (Steve Miller, Sharon Lee, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jane Austen, Jim Butcher, and Charles deLint) have kept me going through some pretty dark times. But isn’t that what books are for?
I remember as a child, growing up in a very small town in Maine, books were a window to a world that I thought I’d never see in any other way. TV didn’t come into our home until my early teens and by then I was an avid reader — reading before I got to school. I’ve found that books can supply comfort, advice, knowledge, guides to learning new skills, excitement, adventure, and much more. A library is a way to have the world at your finger tips. Whenever, I want to learn something new my first impulse is to find a book about it.
We may never pare down our library to be a “reasonable” size. I don’t know how to let go of these friends who have shared my life. They may be just paper and print, but nevertheless, books have been there for me whenever I needed them. There are so many good memories of the ones I’ve read. And so many possibilities in the shelves of the ones I have yet to read. So meanwhile, we’ll cull the ones that haven’t managed to touch our hearts or fill that space where the books that might be useful references someday get stored. (I doubt I’m the only person that goes to the reference shelf to look up one thing and next thing I know it’s hours later and I can’t even guess how I got from the subject I was looking for to where I was when I realized my butt is numb from sitting on the floor.)
How big is your library? And, how do you keep it under control? How do you store it?