"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
- Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Dutch humanist
I love to read and I love owning the books I read. A problem associated with owning books, however, is their tendency to accumulate in such numbers that you don't have a place to put them. I had no library in my old home in Atlanta, but purchased some inexpensive build-it-yourself bookcases to create a place where I could display my collection of literary treasures. I ringed the walls of a spare bedroom with these and packed them with so many books that the shelves sagged under their weight.
Sometime after I retired, and just before we re-located to the home we live in now, I decided (with some help from Lisbeth) that I needed to get rid of some of the books I had accumulated over the years. I knew I wouldn't have room for all of them in our new home, and didn't want the added expense of moving them. Painful as it was for me to discard any of my library, I identified about 1,000 titles that I felt I could somehow do without.
It was with much regret and sadness that I put them in with all the other things we hoped to sell in our moving sale. As the sale progressed and I watched my books disappear, I felt like I was losing a bunch of old friends, and I guess I was. Every book a buyer carried away elicited feelings akin to watching my children leave the nest. But I persisted, and by the end of the day all but a few hundred of the books were gone. These I donated to Goodwill, leaving me with maybe 300 that I simply couldn't part with.
At our new home, I had the foresight to include a library in the planning, a luxury I'd never had at any of the other homes we'd owned. This, I thought, will solve the problem of what to do with all my books. I now had floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases with adjustable shelves--how much better could it get? The books I brought with me from Atlanta occupied maybe half the available space, and I had plenty of room for expansion, or so I thought.
This afternoon, as I write this, I am surrounded by three walls of floor-to-ceiling bookcases--now all filled with books. Not only that, there are stacks of books on the floor, books on the shelves and tables in the living room and den (where the wife tells me that knick-knacks and photos are supposed to be displayed), books on and under the night-stand by my bed, books in my car and books in boxes in the attic. I suppose you might say that I'm right back where I was before I moved. Over-booked.
Is there anyone else who has half a dozen books sitting in a stack waiting to be read, as he heads to the bookstore to buy a couple more? Is there anyone else, at any single point in time, who finds herself reading five or six books simultaneously and looking for another one to get started on? Is there anyone else who can't pass a bookstore without browsing for at least a few minutes? Does anyone know of a cure for this affliction?
Some have advised me to use the public library more, borrowing and returning everything I read. That's never worked very well for me because every book I read is read with a highlighter, felt tipped pen or both. I love to mark up the text and make notes in the margins as I read, and I would imagine that our hometown library would frown greatly upon this practice. And there's something that feels good about knowing a book is mine, that I can read it at my leisure, loan it to my friends and pull it off the shelf years later to find a special paragraph that I want to enjoy again. You can't do that with library books.
Frankly, I've about decided I'm stuck with my problem. Despite threats from my wife, lack of habitable space due to the expanding piles of books and hardly enough time to do anything but read, I continue falling under the spell of the written word. I acknowledge my habit and know that where books are concerned, I am truly weak, unable to control my urges, and most likely in need of some serious counseling. I've about given up. In fact, I'm going to run up to Barnes & Noble in a few minutes and see if they have anything new. Wanna join me?
3 comments:
RE,
I too, suffer the same malady. THERE IS NO KNOWN CURE! I have found however, buying new guns, rods, sticks or other toys is an excellent diversion from buying more books.
You might want to look around and see if you have a book by Jimmy Ballard, noted golf pro. It's a red paperback and titled "Perfecting the Golf Swing". It's out of print these days and the starting price on eBay is around $100.00.
I understand this affliction skips a generation. Maybe so as my father had a wonderful book collection and while I like and read(when I can stay awake)quite a bit, I cannot follow suit because of lack of space. My oldest son though, was afflicted and in his 36 years, has a humongus collection of books, only they reside in boxes in the homes of his many friends who have been coerced into "book-sitting" for him. Unless he finds the where-with-all to have a library some day, they will probably find themselves in yard sales or worse, the dump. Too bad. Books are the gateways to the world and to the mind. Each one should be cherished, at least for a while, then passed on to someone who will enjoy it as much as you did.
Dadgumit, Scott! Why didn't you tell me five years ago? I had Ballard's book when I lived in Atlanta and sold it in the moving sale...for $2, I think! You know, I'll bet a lot of those others I sold and gave away were valuable too. Had I known this I could possibly have delayed my Social Security another year and gotten $20 more each month.
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