What Do Your Books Say About You?
Do you ever go into someone's house and their library is just a little too well-curated? They have all the "requisite" books like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, maybe Dostoevsky and a Nabokov thrown in there, some David Foster Wallace, Cormac McCarthy, the Watchmen comic, the required book by a person of color or woman (Margaret Atwood or Toni Morrison) the Anarchist Cookbook for a gag, and some kind of gorgeous coffee-table book about snow leopards, tattoo art, or band photography. And you wonder - have they ever wondered into a Half-Price and bought a book about astronauts or the AIDs virus on the whim? Do they find pleasure in idiosyncrasy, or in order? Do they ever find themselves scouring books on Oklahoman History or picking up pamphlets written by one-time poets? Do they ever buy a bad book and let it fall within the cracks of their manicured? Did they ever indulge in V.C Andrews? Have they ever bought someone's lovingly crafted but shitty self-published book from a dead publisher? Do they read for enjoyment and pleasure, or for some kind of masochistic mental massage? Do they ever read a book that's not on someone's recommended list? Am I only seeing the best of the best, and they've stuffed everything that doesn't suit their high standards of respectability into a box somewhere?
Maybe I shouldn't talk. Almost everyone I've ever dated has commented on my (uncalled for?) literary snobbery. My highly cultivated disdain for what I deem to be the ordinary. I don't even have a bookshelf right now. I leave my books on tables, in beds, in the bathroom, in boxes. I read on my computer and on my iphone and on my cracked Nexus tablet (need to get a new one) and rarely like I imagine I should: In a reading chair, in front of a fire, with everything in its right place and the coffee in front of me on a cozy and not inbetween my knees. I have no curation method. I just let everything spill in and out of me like I'm a literary sewer. I buy books I never read and scroll through reddit during my quiet time. I read comic books and barely glance at the pictures. I read entire books I never remember. I read books while I'm drinking until the words begin to slip and slide along the page and then do it again when I wake up. I read books from my friends because I know their face and I enjoy imagining them writing it, enhancing the experience. I read literature that should enrich my brain and trash that should destroy it and tumblrs filled with nude photography and shitty poetry.
Who has time to organize a bookshelf and the brain? Well, not me, at least. It's all rattling around in there with no requisites or guarded gates.
I can't deny that their literary taste is technically excellent, and I too love Ray Bradbury and Orwell, but sometimes I just hope that I turn a corner and there will be your real library - bumbling and burgeoning and dynamic and unorganized and colorful and authentic in its messiness, just like I want you to be.
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Thanks @snowmachine Interesting read. I used to have a large collection of books, both fiction and non-fiction and I was an avid reader. Then a couple of things happened.
I moved house abroad and became an expat. Suddenly the amount of "stuff" you can take is dramatically reduced and the library has to be culled. The more you move, the more culling. In my last move I was down to a few treasured books.
The upside now is that fiction is readily available on e-book kindle or even in every charity shop as paper copy.
So what does my library consist of now?
I've actually lost my library twice - that's why I prefer to collect on kindle now. Less "stuff" to carry around. I do miss my giant library but at the end of the day I carry it all around inside my head.
It's different for everyone. For some, books are the way to track mental growth and spiritual progress, for some they're trophies to be flaunted and shown off, for some they're what they are to you - food for the brain in their disarray. For me, I love reading books the original way, I fall in love with the texture of the pages and the scent of them, not just what's written.
Thanks for sharing.
Thankfully I have never met a "book snob"- someone with a carefully curated library. Almost everyone I have ever met who is a reader, who bothers with books at all, has shelves and shelves of their favorites- smut, sci-fi, the like. It's funny how we get stuck in a genre. I have that problem too. Although now I have a digital bookshelf, as I got rid of so many books when I moved (I tear up a little just typing that... it was hard to do).
My books are on the floor, table, someone else's house, in other countries... They are everywhere just like my mind is.
Wow! Don't forget the books that I buy simply because of the fond memories I have of reading them as a child! I want to frame this and put it in my own library. It's a true ode to libraries and books.
@originalworks
I have to resist the urge to rebuy books that I already have, because I'm so fond of them!
Makes me laugh! More than once I've lost a favorite paperback in with a bunch of others in the bookshelves and found myself online desperately trying to find it again!
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I like to mix in my poker books in with the canon lit to properly introduce myself to the shelf observer: Hi I read big books but also have a gambling addiction (I have other ones too)". Luckily I'm attractive so this red flag turns to innocent quirk.