On books, and book-like objects

As most of you know, I own a lot of books.

Probably more than I will read in what remains to me of my lifetime, even given that women in my family are extraordinarily long-lived.

I like books. I enjoy having them around. I enjoy arranging them on shelves, pulling one off here and there and opening it up to read a bit of it. I like having the books I've already read around, to refer to, to look up quotations in, to re-read particularly heartwarming or instructive or funny or just plain good passages out of.

I think books are a good technology. You can use them anywhere, provided you have sufficient light to read by - out on a trail in the middle of the forest, in your own bathtub at home, in a car going down the highway (ONLY, I hasten to add, if you are a passenger!), curled up in bed, at the park while your children play on the monkey-bars, in the doctor's waiting room. Even by the side of the road while waiting on the tow truck after your car broke down. (Not that I would probably be in a frame of mind to read in that case, but a person COULD.)

I've seen the various new "readers" - basically a computerized "book" that has files on it that you can read through by scrolling, rather like on a computer screen. I have to admit that although I like the idea of a "book" that you could fit the contents of 15 or 20 actual, physical books on (or more; I have no idea of the storage power of the newer models of these items), I have to admit they leave me a little cold. If you like them, fine, more power to you: they're just not something I can get into.

I like books because, well, they're BOOKS. Every one is a little different. Some of them have their own particular scents. Some creak a certain way (especially the older ones) when you open them. The covers differ - some paperbacks are slick and shiny, some have a slightly pebbly feel, some have a nice satiny finish to the cover. The paper differs - the cheap, now-self-destructing paper of 1940s pulp novels, the lovely cream-laid paper of some of the more expensive scientific books I have, the thin tissue-y paper in my Bibles. (every Bible I own, every translation - and I have three or four - is like that. I suppose it's to make it more compact).

I think part of my disappointment with the e-readers is that although the material you're reading is different, the aesthetic experience is the same every time. And you know, that's kind of important to me. The aesthetic experience with a book.

I also love used books. I don't have as ready access to them as I once did; the nearest decent used-book store is 1/2 hour away. One of the things I love most about used books is how sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll open one and something, some missive from the past, will fall out - a pressed four-leaf clover. A newspaper clipping. A letter. A recipe someone wrote out quickly on the back of an envelope. These things are wonderful and mysterious - why did the book I buy have a partial account of Miss Debra Castleberry's cotillion pressed in it? Why is there a flattened, yellowed carnation in the middle of this old cookbook? Is "Aunt Hitt's reciept" for rice timbales any good? Why did someone save the radio programming listings for May 8, 1949?

I like that feeling of wondering connection - the realization that someone, maybe many years before me, held that same book in their hands. Owned it. Read it. Maybe, if it is a pattern-book or a cookbook, made something described in it. (I can often tell with cookbooks; the pages with paprika stuck to them or with spots from grease or fruit juice). It, oddly enough, makes me feel a little less alone. (I like used books and will usually buy the used one over the new one if given a choice).

I also like seeing how other people deal with there books - I have two big volumes about this. One is called "At home with books" and the other is called, I think "decorating with books."

I enjoyed browsing through the writer's rooms that Sheila linked to a while back, especially the darkish ones lined with bookshelves. (Even though I can't write well in a messy room, I like the messy ones too.)

(And I admit - looking at some of the rooms that make me happy, if they belong to a writer I've never read, like Beryl Bainbridge, it makes me want to read them, just to see if their writing somehow carries a little sense of that room in it).

And I love the staircase that Brian Micklethwait posted about the other day. (Alas, I live in a one-story house or I'd be trying to figure out if someone could build one of those for me.)

I am a member of the Folio Society. For me, it is a kind of expensive affectation but I do like the books - big, heavy, hardbound, with good paper and actual illustrations in them. (I maintain that adults should get illustrated books just as children do - maybe not as many illustrations, certainly, there needs to be enough room for all the words - but I do like the occasional illustration). I tend to order books every fall that are slated to come out at different times. So it's always kind of exciting when I get a package-slip indicating I have a Folio Society box waiting for me at the post office - I never remember what I ordered, what I'm still waiting to come. So it's a little bit like Christmas.

One of the ways I sometimes soothe myself a little when I'm having a bad week is promising myself that as soon as I can find time to make the (hour's round-trip) drive to the nearest bookstore, I'll go. Even if I just browse without buying anything (though that is rare). Or I'll tell myself I can order something from Amazon - last spring I went for that Prime shipping, and it's been worth it to me - being able to get an in-stock book in 2 days (sometimes it's only one!) is wonderful.

Every evening ends for me with my reading a bit before bed. If I have a meeting that runs late or I have to be out somewhere and get home and it's so late I go to bed without reading, I don't sleep as well.

I always travel with books, even if it's just a day-trip somewhere (you never know - you never know when your car might break down. Or when the bridge you have to cross to get back home might collapse. Or something might happen that traps you away from home, and if you don't have a book, you have nothing to DO). I take several books when I travel for longer than overnight. It is partly a "security blanket" thing and I openly admit that - for me, books are totems of home. Home and comfort. They are also an escape. I often travel with at least one scholarly book, because if I wind up sitting next to some kind of strongly opinionated chatterbox (the worst kind) or boor, I can pull it out, smile apologetically, and make some kind of half-truth about "having" to read the book for my career. And in waiting rooms, in concourses waiting for meetings to begin, anywhere - a book is a good way of closing yourself off from the world if you don't want to interact just then. (I'm really not that antisocial or unfriendly; it's just that I get overwhelmed easily in crowds, and the book becomes an item of defense. A way of protecting my brain from the "too much" out there, but also a way of sending a signal, "Hey! Friendly person who wants to talk to me about what Obama can do for me! Not now! Thank you."

They are probably my favorite object of everything around me.