Carthage

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November 04, 2006

"And the books she read, and the books that she said she read..."

"She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines -- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality."
- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

"Hoarding books is unfair to everybody. In fairness to all Book Sale participants:
-No blankets, sheets or any other coverings are allowed.
-You cannot have more than one hundred books or five boxes of books under your control at any given time without purchasing them.
-Anyone caught stashing or hiding books will be expelled."
-SF Library Book Sale Instructions

"Books are trophies."
-Ellie

I've rearranged my books again. Reference books have their own shelf now, separate from the other non-fiction. In having a whole shelf and a half dedicated to non-novels, I've become a more serious, better-educated person in a way I wasn't when I had merely read these books.

In High Fidelity, the main character organizes his record collection autobiographically. ("If I want to find the song "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile but I didn’t give it to them for personal reasons.") One day, when I'm old and cantankerous and my library takes up more space than my furniture or grandchildren, I will organize things this way, beginning with Little House on the Prairie and ending with my back copies of Octogenarian Today. When I die and my library is dismantled, probably no one will care why a spurt of Jonathan Carroll novels is followed by a Vienna guidebook, but at least as my life dissolves out onto other bookshelves it will disappear linearly -- childhood, adolescence, adulthood -- like the better sorts of plots.

Posted by didofoot at November 4, 2006 10:21 AM

Comments

Wonderful blog, my sentiments exactly. I have stacks of books in everyroom in my house, I need to go buy bookshelves or build a wall in my guest room for my books. I don't like to think that I hoard books so much, I just like to be able to return to any book that I particularly enjoyed and reread it. I have found that a book that I might have enjoyed in my adolescence may have a whole new intepretation for me now that I am in my 30s. I don't understand how someone will watch the same movie 20 times or more but as soon as they finish a book they can be rid of it to never be thought of again.

Posted by: The Next X at November 4, 2006 01:09 PM

I'm sure you already know, but Jonathan Carroll writes one of the truly great daily blogs on his website www.jonathancarroll.com Funny, sage, sad, and quite often profound, it is so good that I read it every day like the newspaper.

Posted by: Ethan at November 4, 2006 02:11 PM

I do like JC's blog, though I often forget to check it. I should bookmark that.

and, yeah, I keep books around partly so I can reread them, or go back to check a quote at a moment's notice. but mostly, to be honest, I just like looking at them on the shelves. sometimes I get distracted from whatever book I'm actually reading by my desire to stare at all my other shelved books.

Posted by: didofoot at November 5, 2006 12:00 PM

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