What I want to do, I don't; and what I don't, that's what I do. This is my position regarding books: I love acquiring them, but know I shouldn't. Thanks, lady of the library, for your input on this issue.
Especially in these days of library deaccession, books are easy and cheap to get. Friends of the library book sales allow me to walk out with two or three (or more) good books tucked under my arm for just a few dollars. Many of them are the same I pored over as a boy, e.g. Edwin Tunis' Oars, Sails and Steam with its really informative illustrations and fascinating facts. Or, more recent, Peter Watson's The Modern Mind: An intellectual history of the 20th century, which begins at 1900 with a bang: Freud, Picasso, Planck, deVries, and Knossos Evans setting the stage for the extraordinary century following. How could I not have this comprehensive, well-written, fascinating book?
Well, here it is in hand, but what to do with all the other books which have caught my attention and joined my 'library'? They had their moment in the limelight of my attention but now are on shelves or, more humiliatingly, in boxes, not unloved, not forgotten (strictly) but on hold.
Once my books were in cardboard boxes, then bags, then heaps (I blush to confess) before renovations allowed me put up walls of bookshelves which have long since been filled. Each volume provides something that could filling in some area of woeful ignorance, or teach me how to do something enriching, or serve as a tool for teaching (oh, what I have for you, my grandson!), or just delight me with wit or sweetness or trenchancy.
The problem is space, and time. Do I read as much as I did, much less as much as I want to? No, sadly not. My days are full, and I have projects to pursue (especially this blog) which cut into reading time and mental space. In fact, to speak freely, I'm impatient with just reading; I want to interact with what I encounter, think about it more deeply, write about it, copy it or build on it. There are passages in W.H. Hudson's Far Away and Long Ago which I want to be able to depict, but I don't know how (yet) nor even why. All this personal response is a kind of friction that slows my reading to its current crawl, no more than a book every week and a half (if that).
The response is, 'Well, everything is online,' but, of course, it isn't. It just isn't. It's a wonderful source of all kinds of information, especially that which is responding to current concerns. What I don't find, unless in some place like Project Gutenberg, is the individuality of obsession or expression one finds in books. Besides (or perhaps because of) their physicality, books provide the time and space for extended presentation, for quirky detail, for illustrations overwhelm our tablets and tablet attention spans. Books are ample, unpressured, conversational; each seems to me a friend, a companion in this walk through life. How can anyone have too many such?
But at the library I've visited for decades now, down in the basement, I saw that you, an older woman with an open manner, had put a book in your pile of old portrait photos that I'd wanted but had left on the shelf. I peered and you noticed. Would you like to have it? you asked.
It's yours, I said. You picked it.
But I just look at these books, you said, and bring them back. I can't afford to keep them. I don't have the space. So when I'm done looking, I'll call you and you can come get it.
I want to do something about those nineteenth century visages, perhaps draw them.
Whatever. I'll give you a call, you promised.
I wrote my name and phone number on the back of a business card you handed me. Text me, I said.
I try to stay as far away from computers as I can, you replied.
I asked your name and left (with my stash), wishing you a good weekend.
Maybe you have an answer, at least for yourself. Let me think. Meanwhile, at least I'll get that book.
Especially in these days of library deaccession, books are easy and cheap to get. Friends of the library book sales allow me to walk out with two or three (or more) good books tucked under my arm for just a few dollars. Many of them are the same I pored over as a boy, e.g. Edwin Tunis' Oars, Sails and Steam with its really informative illustrations and fascinating facts. Or, more recent, Peter Watson's The Modern Mind: An intellectual history of the 20th century, which begins at 1900 with a bang: Freud, Picasso, Planck, deVries, and Knossos Evans setting the stage for the extraordinary century following. How could I not have this comprehensive, well-written, fascinating book?
Well, here it is in hand, but what to do with all the other books which have caught my attention and joined my 'library'? They had their moment in the limelight of my attention but now are on shelves or, more humiliatingly, in boxes, not unloved, not forgotten (strictly) but on hold.
Once my books were in cardboard boxes, then bags, then heaps (I blush to confess) before renovations allowed me put up walls of bookshelves which have long since been filled. Each volume provides something that could filling in some area of woeful ignorance, or teach me how to do something enriching, or serve as a tool for teaching (oh, what I have for you, my grandson!), or just delight me with wit or sweetness or trenchancy.
The problem is space, and time. Do I read as much as I did, much less as much as I want to? No, sadly not. My days are full, and I have projects to pursue (especially this blog) which cut into reading time and mental space. In fact, to speak freely, I'm impatient with just reading; I want to interact with what I encounter, think about it more deeply, write about it, copy it or build on it. There are passages in W.H. Hudson's Far Away and Long Ago which I want to be able to depict, but I don't know how (yet) nor even why. All this personal response is a kind of friction that slows my reading to its current crawl, no more than a book every week and a half (if that).
The response is, 'Well, everything is online,' but, of course, it isn't. It just isn't. It's a wonderful source of all kinds of information, especially that which is responding to current concerns. What I don't find, unless in some place like Project Gutenberg, is the individuality of obsession or expression one finds in books. Besides (or perhaps because of) their physicality, books provide the time and space for extended presentation, for quirky detail, for illustrations overwhelm our tablets and tablet attention spans. Books are ample, unpressured, conversational; each seems to me a friend, a companion in this walk through life. How can anyone have too many such?
But at the library I've visited for decades now, down in the basement, I saw that you, an older woman with an open manner, had put a book in your pile of old portrait photos that I'd wanted but had left on the shelf. I peered and you noticed. Would you like to have it? you asked.
It's yours, I said. You picked it.
But I just look at these books, you said, and bring them back. I can't afford to keep them. I don't have the space. So when I'm done looking, I'll call you and you can come get it.
I want to do something about those nineteenth century visages, perhaps draw them.
Whatever. I'll give you a call, you promised.
I wrote my name and phone number on the back of a business card you handed me. Text me, I said.
I try to stay as far away from computers as I can, you replied.
I asked your name and left (with my stash), wishing you a good weekend.
Maybe you have an answer, at least for yourself. Let me think. Meanwhile, at least I'll get that book.
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