If you’re a reader, fond of acquiring books, and have ever moved, you know there’s a day of reckoning when the sheer mass of paper harkens back to its original arboreal form. There’s also the curious phenomena where the sight of the cover, or even the pages themselves, trigger a corresponding site in the brain, bringing back some of the content and memories of reading, circumstances and experience. Books are not just objects, they can become part of our identity. But these are considerations for another time.
The bulk and burden of books may or may not be a vanishing element in our lives, as digital media proliferates, and reading actual volumes wanes as an entertainment or information source. It seems to me fitting that the packed box or carton of books has so much heft. Books ARE heavy in more ways than one. There’s no way around it. Having recently moved sparked an intensive bout of assessment. Are all books keepers indefinitely? Are they really toss-able? Or, heaven forbid, burnable, as an act of lightening and transformation rather than censorship and intimidation? It’s beneficial to recall; All is transitory in this world.
The highly subjective solution settled upon was to save titles that felt essential, and give the rest to Goodwill. In my particular case there’s an interesting little detail. Having to move in a bit of haste, the collection was sorted somewhat ruthlessly. Half a dozen boxes went out the door. The thing that happened, which I find amusing and poetically satisfying…I had an odd habit of stashing money inside random books, my own pillowcase banking system. Lo and behold, after many years transpired, I forgot what was put where, and didn’t really have time to parse each tome for purse. So there’s a good chance if these books get on shelves, and capture someone’s interest to the point of being picked, they might discover some legal tender therein as bonus.
If a book falls in the forest and nobody’s there to read it, does it make a point?
Stacks
It’s Swedish Death Cleaning time in my life. Over the last 60+ years I’ve acquired 7 full bookcases including one of only cookbooks. There are numerous collector items and a lot of inherited Victorian volumes. As I sort, I check for money I stashed (yep, I did that too), and add a post-it with someone’s name if I intend it to be passed on when I leave the building. This is a big job and seems like penance for never parting with so many before now. Looks like I’ll be cutting down to about half of the fiction & nonfiction collections. I dread going thru the cookbooks.
Yes books are heavy.
We had an upstairs bedroom completely devoted to books, wall to wall, isles between the shelves. Mistakenly believing that when our 1860s farmhouse was built, they used hefty, full dimension studs, 16″ on center, I had calculated the weight load and carrying capacity for the 15’6″ spans, and felt confIdent that the structure was adequate. And it was for 2 or 3 years, until one day the ceiling at the front of our living room (which was below the second-floor book room) detached from the wall, and came down about 4 inches.
Fearing that the entire book room might end up in our living room, propped up the ceiling with 2 laminated beams, each held up by a jack post, with 4 additional jack posts in the ceil directly under the living room jack posts to support the weight, which we figured was equivalent to 2 elephants.
For the next 2 years, our living room featured 2 beams gnoing crosswise to the joists, each with a jack post on one end. Finally, we found suitable alternate space for the two elephants. . . er, I mean books. . . and bit the bullet to hire an excellent carpenter to sister the cracked joists, and install a lovely tin ceiling. An added benefit, is that when the old ceiling was removed to make way for the tin ceiling, we disconnected and removed the old knob & tube, and insulated the space between the first floor ceiling and upstairs floor.
CORRECTION
It was my proofreader’s day off. I wrote:
“with 4 additional jack posts in the ceil directly under the living room jack posts to support the weight. . .”
Meant to write:
“with 4 additional jack posts in the cellar ceiling directly under the living room jack posts to support the weight. . . “
I like looking at the shelves
Good books become trophies on display after being read.
There are the big gamers – “Tale of Genji,” “War & Peace” etc., up on the shelf next to the smaller curiosities – “How To Lie With Statistics,” “The Manual”…
There are the one’s I captured as child that I still display – “Let’s Read,” “Rutabaga Stories,” “Charlotte’s Web” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
I have my college books, my amusement park and world’s fair collection, and art and animation books.
I keep some of them for nostalgia, some for usefulness, some because they have information no other book has, some because they are genuinely rare, and some because they fit in well with the others I’m keeping.
I like keeping similar books together – the how-to’s go together, the nature guides have their space, cookbooks have multiple shelves, and so on.
I suppose many of us have a fantasy that some interested young person will come along and want to acquire a library of great things. More likely the majority will end up being recycled some day.
I never put money in books but I have used odd pieces of paper as bookmarks. And some of my Japanese novels might have cherry blossoms pressed in them somewhere. : )