What I’ve Learned from Books
The only time I hate books is at moving time. Like so much of the flotsam of life that hibernates in closets, attics and cellars, unseen except when transported from one dwelling place to another, most books slumber on shelves undisturbed until their keepers grow restless.
Books are heavy. Unlike phonograph records, which have evolved into ever lighter, smaller forms, real books remain weighty regardless of subject (paperbacks are not real books). Their varied sizes resist uniformity in packing.
Except encyclopedias. They stand stolidly shoulder to shoulder like plebes on parade. You can place all 26 volumes snugly in a large square box, but to do so is to produce a container as immovable as an elephant in a quagmire.
It is the tendency of the young and the inexperienced to find large cartons that once held 144 rolls of toilet tissue and toss as many books as they can find into each, resulting in a mass that would strain an Olympic weightlifter. In my house, nobody is allowed to pack the books but me. I am gradually improving on my books-to-box ratio, but until I get it down to two-to-one, they will still be too heavy.
There are books I have never read and don’t intend to, books I have read and do not intend to read again, books I intend to read but will probably never get around to reading (the largest lot). I have lost count of how many times we have journeyed together.
Nothing has less monetary value than an old books, unless Gutenberg printed it. You can’t even give them away to most libraries, which are already bursting their quoins. What else is there to do with them?
I gaze at a shelf of look-alike volumes containing all the wisdom of the western world within their unturned, possibly uncut pages. They looks back at me stonily, haughtily, proudly challenging me to dispose of them. I feel guilty for entertaining the idea, for having neglected them, for not appreciating all they have to offer me. To abandon them would be a philistine act of rejection. I pack them.
There are textbooks from the economics, management, finance and writing courses I have taught, rapidly made obsolete by superficially revised, outrageously overpriced new editions. I have no qualms in discarding them; they are not so much wisdom as obfuscation.
There are novels, picked up at yard sales and flea markets, with ancient inscriptions from unknown admirers to unknown admires in spidery Palmer penmanship. I hold one, weighing its fate. Discarding it seems like trashing a sentiment. I pace it gently in a carton.
Old Tarzan books from my youth, bindings flapping from long-dried glue – I shall certainly retain those. And Baseball Joe and the Giants – they don’t write books like that anymore. I pack them.
I will take more books with me than I brought to this place. I am resigned: it will always be that way. There will be more boxes of books this time. But they will be in smaller boxes. That is one great lesson of life I have learned from books.