More on books

[siercia]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

And yes, it is about love of reading vs. love of books as an object. Now, unlike dollraves, I actually love books as physical objects. prunesnprisms and I have had this discussion before - I love the act of sitting with a book, holding it my hands, turning the pages. I've never been able to embrace books in electronic format (although, as an aside, if you've not checked out Daily Lit, you should. A snippet of a book e-mailed to you each day, in totally coffee break sized chunks.) I've tried audio books, but I have trouble with them. My mind wanders and I miss huge chunks. They don't fit well into the small spaces of life into which I find that I can slide a few pages of the current book. But, as much as I love books and reading, I'm less and less enchanted with owning books.

My question came from a spark of a thought I had early yesterday when I was thinking thinking about shifting books. My logic brain said to me, "You know, you on't need to keep those two entire shelves of Stephen King books, you know" My lizard brain reacted in horror - "But I LOVE STEPHEN KING!" The first brain rolled its eyes at my lizard brain. "Yeah, and any single one of those books, you can find at the library. ANY ONE OF THEM. Hello, wildly popular modern writer? Are you on crack, lizard brain?" And I thought to myself, you know, that's true. There's a few I'd not get rid of, but the ironic reality here is that I don't even own a lot of my true favorites - I read them when I was a teenager off my mom's bookshelves, and never bought copies of my own. Many of the ones I have I read when I got them and have not opened again. But you see what prompted the question. And of course, it's true for nearly every other book on my shelves. I bet easily 95% of them could be found at the library, or through ILL. I didn't have a lot of time to post yesterday, so it was a weirdly brief pop up question, I realize.



I've long claimed to not understand the concept of collecting, at least, when they are things of no utility beyond decoration, or sometimes even just ownership. No that I'd ever criticize or think less of someone because they love Pez dispensers or teddy bears or obscure electronic gizmos from the 50s, or anything of the other eleventy billion things people collect (well, unless they live in my house, sorry, Wiley), but I just don't get it on some core level. I did for a while, and have been known to get caught up in fads of stuff (beanie babies, anyone?), but the older and more boring I get, the less and less I get it.

The few things I can be said to collect (books, yarn, stitching notions like cloth and floss) are all things that ultimately have a use. The conflict comes when I have them, but I'm no longer using them. For the stitching stuff and the yarn, that's often less of a big deal. I go through the collections of stuff occasionally, weed out the stuff I don't want and throw it in a bag for goodwill. (Speaking of, do any of my stitching friends have a use for an ~ 6inch square Q-snap frame?)

But books, books are different. Because they're out in public, displayed proudly for visitors to thumb through and notice. Because as much I can shun the notion that what you owns says something about you (thanks, marketers), I can't shake clinging to that very idea about books. I know I do it, measure people by their bookshelves. Someone who comes and browses my bookshelves will find a history buff, a feminist, an intellectual (assuming that they assume I've read them all - and I'm probably at 90%). They'd know I love Stephen King, and Bill Bryson, and Sue Grafton. That I'm a fan of historical novels, mystery stories, food writing, underdogs. All without my saying a word.

I feel like my identity is somehow bound up in the books on my shelf, particularly those that come from past me's, ones that only exist in my head now, instead of as a real entity standing in front of people. Many of them are from college and reflect that part of my personality that I still cling to, even though I get farther away from it every day. I a way, letting go of those books means letting go of the incarnation of myself that felt the most true, or at least the one I'd like to think was the most true, even if it probably wasn't.

So I sit, torn between waiting to shed more of the cruft in my life, like books I will never read again not share with friends or Widget. That if I were going to move every year for the rest of my life would be packed and unpacked but never opened, because I can't shake the feeling that if I give them away, I'll be giving a little piece of myself away with them. Sometimes I hate my brain.

Thanks for listening to me blather, if you made it this far.

Comments

[bigmeanie.livejournal.com]

I understand. I have 1100+ books in storage (no room in the house) that I only recently decided to cull through and see if there is anything that my students might enjoy.