It is a good rule after reading a new book never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. -C.S. Lewis
Read any good books lately?
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Do you have time to read the books you have? Nope. Me neither. Some people inherit thousands of dollars, property, or vehicles. I’ve inherited thousands of books! They have both comforted and haunted me all of my life. My parents (who were both writers) had books in almost every room of our house. We had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the living room. We had bookshelves at the top of the landing on the stairs. We had books in all the bedrooms. People who paid us a visit must have thought: “Wow, These people have a lot of books!” Mom and Dad both collected books but I think my father had the most. He inherited a hoard of them from his parents and probably even from his grandparents. Many of these books were quite old as a result. Some have even become prized (and rare) among collectors. I’m both proud of the collection and daunted by the responsibility of owning it. It’s been said, most recently in MEME form: “Life is just a series of obstacles that prevent you from reading your book.” Indeed, I’m sorely lacking the time to read this enormous cache of books. I’ll be lucky to even make a dent in it. That’s what happens when you have more books than anyone could read in a lifetime.
Dad also rekindled his childhood love of Comic Books during his brief retirement. He amassed thousands of them as well. Correction: “ ‘Graphic Novels’ not ‘Comic Books.’ I even helped enable my Dad’s addiction. Every weekend, when he was too ill to drive anymore, I would pile him into the car and take him to Uncle Sven’s Comic Shoppein St. Paul, Minnesota. Mom did have her driver’s license but she never drove. Ever. When I asked Mom about it the answer came back that she was scared to death driving in traffic. She hated it. Understandable. It's better to stay home with a good book. Dad’s interest in comics eventually got me hooked on collecting them myself. Yay, more books! The staff at the Comic Shoppe became genuine pals with my father. When he died of emphysema, from chain-smoking Marlboro Light cigarettes and (before those) packing his collection of pipes with various flavors of tobacco, we forgot to mention his passion for graphic novels in his obituary. I have regretted that to this day. It was one of the last things he truly enjoyed in life. The books and the camaraderie of the friends he had made at Uncle Sven’s brought him lots of joy. He was something of a celebrity at the Comic Shoppe. Yes, he was helping keep the lights on, but they also knew they had a real old-school journalist in their midst.
The Japanese have a word for collecting too many books and never reading them: “Tsundoku” (積ん読). That word also can mean something like: “many books to be read after they have been shelved.” My parents did not suffer from “tsundoku” though. You see, they actually read their books. I may have slipped into tsundoku (or been pushed) but not Mom and Dad. Their books were read each night and also meticulously shelved. I wish I could ask them what order they used to organize their library. Mom has late-stage Lewy Body Dementia now and Dad has been gone since July of 1993. So I cannot ask. I think their books were shelved by the subject matter: Native American books, science books, science fiction, mysteries, autobiographies, history, poetry, etc.
Many of the titles of the books stick with me even if I cannot recall the rhyme or reason of how they were organized. These titles would jump into my field of vision as I ran through our house growing up. Titles like: Out of Their Minds, you can say that again! Fired In Anger, wow, what did he do to his boss? The Wartime Journals of Charles Lindbergh, Van Loon’s Lives, Crazy Horse, Desert War, Octopussy, who could forget that title? Men of Iron, Childhood’s End, The Look Book, Footprints on the Moon, Gulliver’s Travels, Little Crow, Slaughterhouse-Five, Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Double Planet, Doctor Zhivago, and more. Even Mein Kampf was there. Sans title on that one though - just a black dust jacket with an ominous blocky white swastika on the spine. “Know your enemies” my Dad (who hated the Nazis) would have said. That book has strangely gone missing over the years. Many of the books have.
I've done lots of work to be a good collections curator but sometimes the ship is just too massive to steer. It can be unyielding. What to do with them to avoid tsundoku? Read them of course! Obviously, but I also must admit many are collecting dust when perhaps they could be collecting tuition money for my kids instead.
What I did in the past with the vast collection wasn't always intelligent. I still have about 60 percent of the original cache of books but many are in the wind. For example: I once loaded a bunch of them into 15 to 20 paper grocery bags and stupidly just sold them to a local used book store. I trusted the store clerk and took whatever paltry sum he offered me. I say stupidly because it was done out of convenience when my Mom decided to sell our house to open a restaurant in northern Minnesota with my late brother. Something had to be done to help her manage the big move. “No one needs this many books” we must have thought at the time. Perhaps. I didn’t know the true value of the books though. So, when I went to that used book store to try to "thin the herd" they saw me coming and got a haul. Such is the fate of widows and orphans to be held at the mercy (and sometimes downright pilfering whims) of others. My Mom put her trust in me. I was putting my trust in a guy behind the counter at a used book dispensary. Oh, how I wonder today what I gave him back then?
Yes, some of our family's books fell victim to ne'er-do-wells, liars, and biblioklepts who raided the ship. However, we also loaned some books to people. What are you gonna do? When you have so many it sometimes seems selfish to say “no” to someone who kindly inquires: “Can I borrow this book?” You just know they never, ever will return it to the fold but you say: “Yes, certainly. Help yourself.” Books take us to distant worlds and they manage frequently to journey themselves.
The end goal is to own a great collection of great books but not so great a collection that no one ever reads them. We keep the books we want for our families and ourselves. We sell the books that we can bear to part with. Hopefully, we make a few bucks and only a few mistakes on that front. Finally, we share the books we love so much they feel like they've become a part of ourselves. I believe they have. "You've got to read this book!" We exclaim. If those books do not return we hope they have found a loving new home. Today I had a good laugh at myself for opening boxes of books that I marked (seven years ago) as “FOR SALE” only to sneak many of the titles back onto my “Keepers” shelves. "Books are not that bad of a vice to have,” I tell myself whenever I'm at a bookstore. It's genetics! I was born into a home of writers who treasured books as one treasures diamonds, emeralds, silver, and gold. Books change people's lives and they change human history. Ironically, those who ban or burn them understand that books are of immeasurable value.
