Secrets From My Library

Growing up, I lived in a house devoid of books.  Therefore, my house of worship early on became the public library to which I would ride my bike every two weeks to check out my limit of ten books.

So when I came of age, I began to hoard.  That is the impolite term; I am a collector, I guess, but I do not collect for show.  I read and read and read the books I have, more a reader than anything else.

A few years ago, the college library staff began to weed out their collections.  They placed the discards on a cart near the main door and put a sign announcing they were free for the taking.  So I took.  I loaded up my trunk over and over again, even when there was no longer room in my apartment.  Also, at the urging of Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda, I began writing to publishers asking for review copies of books to feature on this blog.  They rarely turned me down, so books began arriving by post literally every day and I struggled to read them and write reviews fast enough to keep up with the flow.  I was in heaven.

I am also an inveterate book buyer, scouring The New York Review of Books and Publishers Weekly and every other magazine and journal to compile a list for future shopping.  I am in solidarity with Erasmus who said, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”  I could still do with less food, but no one who sees me on a regular basis will dispute my lack of fashionable accoutrements.  With my backpack, sweatpants and polo shirt and I am ready for anything.

So here is a little tour of some of the things in my library.  At the top of this piece is my shelf of anthologies, textbooks, and books I use for reference crowned with all of my picture and large format books wedged up to the ceiling.

 

On the floor directly in front of the reference shelf are the stacks of books I am working on reading immediately.  Some people keep stacks by their bedside; I’d break my neck getting up in the middle of the night to pee if I did that.  So I stack them on the floor of my work area.  That being said, I am constantly adding and subtracting from the stacks.  The book I am currently reading makes reference to another writer’s work or a particular book, and I am off to search room by room to see if I have it.  I pull it from my shelves, or order it, and it goes into the stack.  I collect far more books than I could ever read by almost five to one.  It is a little disconcerting knowing I may not be able to read everything I want to read before my time is up, but I keep trying.

 

This wall of shelves was even a worse mess just a few weeks ago.  In a fit of quarantine cleaning, my wife and I worked through each shelf trying to bring some order to the chaos.  This was the end result, and it is much neater, except I used to know where everything was within the cataclysm, but now I have to relearn where things are in this new arrangement.  Chaos is only chaos to those on the outside.

These two shots contain one of my treasures partially hidden:  the entire set of Great Books volumes.  I got these when a school divested itself of the library in favor of more computers and technology.  I could not believe my luck.  There is a lifetime of reading there.

 

 

This towering stack rising to just below the light switch contains all the Horatio Hornblower novels, all of G.K. Chesterton’s works, and most of historian Gary Wills’ collection.  I reread all of Hornblower, by C.S. Forester and they have held up well.  Those novels are part of a number of seafaring books I have collected over the years.  Chesterton I started reading in sixth grade with Miss Ford and I have loved him ever since.  I read something recently that he might have been on the Autism spectrum, which only intrigued me more.  Evidently, he could write an essay while dictating a second one to his secretary.  He is an incredible genius and a joy to read, especially his Father Brown mysteries.  Gary Wills is the only writer for me who can make sense of the Catholic Church, and thus he is incredibly important to me.

 

For years, this was my typewriter.  I could pound away and that thing absorbed it all.  In one apartment where we lived, the woman living below us kept complaining that we were hammering too much all the time.  She wanted to know what we were building.  We weren’t.  I was typing an essay.  Lucky for her, by the mid-90s we were using the quieter computer.  But I sure miss pounding the old behemoth every day.

 

A few years ago, traveling up the coast of California, we stopped in San Luis Obispo at a unique store that sold all kinds of gifts and strange items popular with college students.  They had articulated action figures like Albert Einstein, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and William Shakespeare.  This is Sherlock Holmes peeking out of a shelf to watch me work.

My friend and brother, William Michaelian, suggested I do this blog post.  I have rooms and other treasures that I will share another time.  Since we have all been embracing online meetings, it has been interesting seeing other people’s bookshelves in the background to compare to our own.  Always fascinating to see what people read and what books they believe are too important to live without.