Musing 36
Banal Piece Of Furniture?
The bookcase is up. Burned my lentils while having to get it assembled in record time. I needed it to be up for the night, so that the books could get used to it and decide amongst themselves which would like to make the move. I believe in socialising books and making seating-arrangements to promote interrelationships; sometimes I give them what they ask for, sometimes I try to stretch them a bit by letting them make new acquaintances. I am not one to sort by colour, but this year I have put the boy and girl novelists on opposite sides of my larger case. And the girls are leaning against Proust, while the rest of the Frenchies are underneath the men. I wonder what any of this is trying to say to anyone. I don't think I'm exactly librarian material. (We ate fried eggs in the end.)
It took me all day to shift my books around. It would have been so nice to organise them according to language or subject, alphabetically in classical rows, but it's impossible. For one thing I have several shelves reserved for "ones to read". I can't integrate them yet, and "lose" them in the crowd. Then there are art books (general) and Anthroposophic interpretations of art which are better put with the Anthroposophical interpretations of the Gospels, Greek aesthetics and Grimm Fairy Tales; Kierkegaard has to share a shelf with history and Schama's Rembrandt rests next to a book on the diaspora (which I don't think he'll mind too much). Milton alongside this, though, is pushing my rhyme and reason. I ran out of space on the pre-modern English shelf. It didn't help much when I put my few American's on the bottom shelf of my new case.
In this case, Murakami ended up with a shelf all to himself, with plenty of room to spare, if we are into stacking. Don't have a lot of other Japanese authors (my mother has many and she gets very upset if I buy the same novel twice - not that she is very keen to lend her books to me. I usually don't return them, she says. Not true, I just take a very, very long time to be finished with them.
What a stupid piece of furniture, it suddenly felt ridiculous to be straining my back on words. I had just spent money I could have put towards a dog (getting one maybe/maybe not ever/soon for company after I leave Steemit?) on dead trees to store more dead trees. What on earth does anyone want to read a book for, anyway!?!
After four hours of moving piles of books around the room I no longer could hear my own mind, with its own indexing system. Who the heck was this crazy cow with all those dead trees in her house? I have another side-board with shelves instead of cupboards that is advertised as a quainte storage space for your odd belongings and for the rest a nice clean surface inviting a fruit bowl or a piggy-back plant (tolmiea menziesii)
For Sensible Readers (Who Borrow/Return from Libraries)
There are some refreshing minimalist book shelf ideas here for people who go to the beach once a year and take along something to read. I wonder if I could challenge myself to find a "beach book" in my collection?
Picture from Pixabay. I don't own a hat. Or a beachtowel. Or a beachbook. As a lens-wearer I have tons of sunglasses though (try finding a pair that doesn't blind you in some way though - in a tunnel, in the shade, barring vision through your rear mirror etc). If you know a good brand - for car driver, not fashionista - that doesn't cost hundreds of pounds or dollars let me know.
Never Read Without Giving Yourself A Work-Out
I sit down with a cup of cocoa and feel how sore my muscles are. A sedentary winter has been too abruptly broken by my my spring zest to tidy and organise home and garden. I even have an invisible thorn in the sole of my foot, buried deep in callous. I hobble along causing further malalignments. But then I suddenly feel how indispensible the weight of the book is to keeping your head on your shoulders - quite literally - attached to your limbs and that flexible, bouncy spine (ha! would that it were!).
Suddenly it feels like E-books are at the root of all moral corruption! You need the weight of print in your lap - variably so (not replaced by a single tablet). All that you read is dead weight: feel that! Turn over the page with muscle power and know that! Hear the dry paper. Watch the beginning getting buried by the middle to the end, when the cover will clasp all you now think you know back together. As your mind digests the content and does what it will with it, remain aware of the book as something outside yourself, an influence you must extract from carefully, slowly. There is nothing swipeable about a book.
Reanimated by the cocoa if not my whacky justification for why we buy to keep books at all, I spend another hour on the books, till I move on to the CDs..... No, don't get me started (opera next to gregorian chanting next to Occitan lays feels wrong, so we can't do "voice" in one drawer....)
I felt so curious after reading this: what is your favorite Murakami book? As I read your previous posts I often thought I had to recommend "A Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" to you, in case you had not read it. I wonder if you have and if I was right in thinking you might like it.
Spot on! Yes I have listened (see comment #orangina) to that one - and read it alongside (here's a writer who reads better when read out loud - or so I learned from the amazing narration by Rupert Degas, which helped me fall in love with Murakami and find the right tone in which to read him).
Also the Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance are fantastically surreal, and go with Wonderland for me because of the narrator - which reminds me to read the other two from the Rat series (Wind/Pinball). The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle worked for me as did Kafka on the Shore, despite not everybody liking it so much. Saw the film for Norwegian Wood, but will have to read it to compare (although it feels like a coming of age novel which is not quite my thing). Not quite sure why 1Q84 had to be that thick (you know, with limited shelf space and all!...). Also learned a lot about Murakami from his running book. The underground gas attack is on the to-do pile. The interview with Seiji Ozawa is also interesting to me: I know Murakami is a jazz buff, so I am curious how much he has to discuss with this classical conductor.
Gave his Women a miss (as I have most of his short stories). But I think I'll accept the challenge to eventually have read every scrap of Murakami.
Waiting for his Commendantore (Oct) - crazy late, because I've seen it out already in some countries, in other language translations. May have to tear out the pages as I read (my mother's style on her travels!) because I have no more room for another bookcase!
I know you prefer the weight of dead trees on your hands, but for 1Q84 and other big ones I recommend e-reading. If I were a tree, a book woud definetely be my choice for eternity, no doubt, but there is room for digital literature in my heart too :)
Love the idea behind your suggestion, but my eyes less so.
I like your new shelf - looks good and sturdy! I too have my own system for organizing books based on my own weird logic. And somehow, even after years, I know where they are and why I put them in that specific place.
I have to differ on the weight of the book thing though. I'm not big on ebooks, but I adore audiobooks. I read quite a few books from my reading phd lists as I made laps around my neighborhood because so much reading in a chair was killing my back. Now I am addicted to them and even if I do still love to write in margins and underline real books, I read about 50 audiobooks a year I would not get to read at all if I weren't doing that while I drive or cook. Certain ones help me sleep when I need to shut off the internal monologue at 2:30 am too!
Yay! Another audiobook lover! So hard to find here. Been bashed about the head with them by people who find them a waste of time. But I have no time to waste so I MUST also read per audiobook. Plus they make such nice company if you find the right narrators. Friends for life doubled (author+narrator). Oh at least 50 a year (although Knausgaard and Stendhal slowed me down, and the planned Proust may too!), easily. Prepare 1095 meals to them a year (b'fast, lunch, dinner). Often running 3-4 books at one time! (Alan Watts for b'fast; Nesbo's Macbeth for lunch; Burnt Out Case by Green during my walk (but almost finished so then next A Short History of Tractors - Lewycka), must fit in the last bit of Charterhouse of Parma during cooking, and might wander off into the night on The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan.)
Don't buy a dog love adopt one so many die alone in shelters who hope for someone to be their human ...
I know where you are coming from. Just feeling broody.
To be honest, and you'll hate me for ever more, but I for one am not suited to taking on a second-hand dog unless it walks up to me out of the blue: too much previous owner attached to them. My grandmother had many dogs from the pound and they all terrorised her household. It's one of the reasons, though, I am reluctant to take any pet, cat or dog or guinea-pig: as with everything, man has "made" them in excess and there is something dreadful about that.
Plus they cost a lot to take care of, as you fortunately remind me (the hard way).
Pounds do have puppies too. and you could always get a small dog all mine are monsters except for titine and Zoe- titine s 23 pounds zoe 45 and everyone else between 60 -80pounds so that just costs a lot plus vet costs. But yes do not adopt another being if you are not ready to commit heart and soul, there is no greater love as it is deep and unconditional but it does require a commitment that is time intensive when done right .
I also enjoy reading actual books. I like going to a nice dollar bookstore like 20 miles away to find rare old books at a great price. ;D
Oh yes! I'd walk 30 miles for a REAL bookstore with such finds! The smell of bookworm,... mmmm lovin' it!
What an inspiring post! I love books! Unfortunately many of mine are still in boxes after a major move and while I'm trying to fix this more than 300 year old house... glad there is finally light at the end of the tunnel :-)
You writing about organizing your books reminds me of an encounter a long time ago. Even as a teenager I had a fair amount of books already. When I visited a girlfriend in her house the fist time, I noticed that she had a full book shelf too. To my big surprise however, I quickly noticed, that she didn't have a single book with even one picture in it. Whereas I had none without pictures... the relationship was doomed ;-)
Audiobooks have become so important form me. I hardly ever paint, without... listening (?) to one.. must be one of those language things again, I had no clue one could actually "read" those too 🤔
Fantastic! Another audiobook lover for the list. It feels like I'm forming a whole new group here!
Do you also find then, that certain books become associated with a work of art? Say, you see the book again, or someone makes mention of it you are immediately transported to an exact time/place which is totally irrelevant to the book but inextricably linked to when you "read" it - with a specific "illustration"? This seems to work less so for me when I am reading a print book, maybe because one is less mobile (I walk a lot around town to audiobooks). There are now traffic lights in Madame Bovary!
I went through similar when I got a (new to me) shelve system from my neighbor that is moving. But I gave up trying to sort the books. They will have to get along and be glad they are no longer in boxes in my storage closet.
That's right: you tell 'em who's pack-leader!