Reckless Book Behavior

It may be Pumpkin-Spice season (or Peppermint, for the eager-beavers), but around here it’s Book Season. True, book season runs 12 months a year. Still, something about the first cold grey skies looming above leafless trees drives a person to seek a cozy chair, a cup of tea, and the next title perched on top of the stack.

The challenge in our household, though, has less to do with finding the chair (or time to read), and more to do with organizing the books. In fact, it has moved from challenge to crisis. Some of our friends have libraries that glisten with order. Even when they don’t glisten, the volumes largely fit on the shelves.

There’s no chance of that happening here. We do have some order in our library, with the major flaw being duplication of categories (e.g., all four-hand piano music is on this shelf, except for those volumes inexplicably across the room sitting on a different shelf). This problem though, is solvable.

What is not solvable is the sheer number of books and musical scores that live in our house. The problem originated when two people with Ph.D.’s in music married one another thirty years ago. Hank’s copies were crisp, clean, and fresh in appearance (even though he had read them all). My copies looked as if they had been run over by a farm tractor.

Still, we survived that problem. The present crisis stems from a malady known as “Reckless Book Behavior” (RBB). It affects primarily me. Hank, fortunately, does not suffer from RBB. He consistently refuses to acquire books he doesn’t want or need. He also gives away books when they are no longer useful or desired.

I’m the one unable to break free of the shackles of this ailment. Intellectually I realize that, except in a few sentimental cases, it is irrational to keep bundles of Pre-K board books under the rationale of “Well, you never who know might visit with little kids”. It is equally irrational to continue to acquire doubles and triples of classic titles “just in case” someone comes along and wants one. There are other symptoms of RBB I could mention, but you get the point.

The fact is, we no longer live in a world where one has to build a comprehensive personal library so that necessary or desired materials will be physically at hand (although that’s still a prime definition of paradise). For better or worse, a person in the internet era can find, on-line, most historical documents, classic literature, scholarly articles, and bibliographic information that, formerly, came solely from physical books and journals.

But this great fact hasn’t healed me. I am too weak. I seem unable to resist the fabulous book recommendations given in blogs by my favorite colleagues and in social-media posts by friends and former students. I am helpless against the lure of thrift-stores shelves and library book sales (“Five-bucks a bag, anyone?”). Most drastic of all, though, is a temptation offered by a large used-bookstore in our area, McKay’s. Across their long glass vestibule (it used to be some kind of a grocery store), a line of heavy, wheeled carts overflows with free books. These carts are the big types that post-offices employ to sort packages, or hotels use to collect dirty linen. They are refilled throughout each day with scoops of books no longer wanted on McKay’s shelves, or with residual titles from boxes of books people bring in, hoping to resell. Someone needs to put up a neon sign that reads “Danger Zone,” although that might not deter me from digging in.

True, the mish-mash contents of these carts can be of zero interest and even less value (torn paperbacks, out-of-date catalogues, battered workbooks for withdrawn chemistry texts). But treasures abound too: children’s books deemed too boring or traditional to stand alongside today’s vampire and fantasy series; art folios that cost a fortune when new, dog-eared volumes of classic literature, serious biographies of serious figures who aren’t au courant. The temptations go on and on.

So, when I go to McKay’s, say, to search for a CD collection of old-timey Radio Westerns for grandson Charlie (like Gunsmoke, Hopalong Cassidy), I walk to the entrance with resolve in my heart! Yet my staunchest resolution to bypass the carts crumbles within seconds. I edge closer. Then I lean over a cart. (You don’t have to lean far, as they are piled high.) The next thing I know, a single title smiles up at me. A bit deeper, another book calls my name. Then another. Whether I find Gunsmoke, or not, I leave with an armful (or worse) of “freebies”.

There is no place to put these books. Nowhere. I drive home, wracked with shame. Hoping Hank’s not watching out of a window, I squish or pile them into the house.

Perhaps the world divides into two types of people: those few who, like my husband, can avoid grabbing batches of random books for which there is no need and absolutely no space; and those who, like me (and many of you poor creatures), lack all will-power, especially when a volume bats its eyes and says “I’m actually a very good book, so please take me home and feed me.”

If I could make one Christmas wish, it would be that my bookshelves expand magically overnight. In addition, the many books that ought to depart to happy new homes would take wing and fly to their destinations. Beyond that, an army of little creatures would appear at the stroke of midnight, scurry across the stretches of bookshelves that line nearly every wall in our house, and tidy everything up. When the sun rises, all opera scores would stand together on rows of sturdy, tall shelves, alphabetized, with breathing space between them. The pockets of English novels and poetry volumes would miraculously find one another and occupy pretty, petit shelves in a hallway. Biographies would sing out to each other from different rooms and form a choir in another hallway. Russian histories would grab each other and build a formidable rank along a library wall. All of my volumes of Pushkin would jeté into a gorgeously carved cabinet. A matching cabinet would hold everything Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. And every other category of printed material would bask in the happiness of being restored to its rightful place.

Oh no, Sarah McKenzie’s latest “Read-Aloud-Revival” book list just hit my inbox. It’s hopeless! I’m doomed. Please, let the next random book I pull from McKay’s freebie be a self-help method called Learning to Accept and Embrace Your Bibliographic Foibles and Flaws.