Books stacks

I have had a long love affair with books. For us book lovers, hard-cover, paperback, used - all have enormous potential to win our affections We use books to learn, to pass time, to escape, to entertain, to grow, to enrich ourselves. Books are enormously attractive to me, and have been so since I was a young reader.

A book has lovely qualities - form, style, substance, value and intrigue. A book is a grand invitation. Closed, it challenges us to get in and find out what is there. Opened, it has great capacity to grab our interest and propel our minds on a fascinating journey. And nothing else will do it quite as well.

There is no real substitute for the actual book. An e-book will not do, for me, at least. C-SPAN's Book Notes is good but not enough. Cliff-notes cheat the author out of his full voice. Even the most literate and clever book review will not take the place of what the book's writer has to say. People seem to need to read the author's thoughts for themselves, though a reviewer often entices more readers.

Books have a wide variety of uses. A book can carry us back or forward in time, or take us around the earth or out in space. Books introduce us to fascinating people and let us be present at the significant events of history. They capture the largest grand pagaents of nations or the smallest intimacies of those in love. A book can let us visit a family or a kingdom, a mountain top or a steamy jungle. Authors share their deepest pleasures and pain, their intellect and their emotions. Mere language is the medium; the words are the minimum needed.

Reading a book is an experience that is active and sensory, based on the book's form. Compare how it is to read an exquisite "coffee table" book with reading a used paperback. Think about the difference between a gently used, embossed leather first edition and an unread book, marked down several times because it would not sell. Are you a reader who appreciates fine paper and the well chosen print font? Or do you just get lost in the words themselves?

Libraries invite us into "the stacks." Because someone has taken care to organize these books, we can go straight to the desired ones. But others of us get as much pleasure in wandering aimlessly, waiting for our eyes to light on an interesting title or a familiar author. There is great honor present in a library; the best minds reside on the shelves. And the honor system assumes we will return the borrowed books after reading "The End."

Where and how we read varies greatly from situation to situation. While waiting in the car or in a line, or waiting alone for your food to arrive in a restaurant, avid readers grab a few paragraphs. Snatches of words are waiting for us, or several chapters. Have you ever been caught in a book from sundown to sunrise, unable to mark the place and put it down? Are there times when you skip to the end, and then feel guilty?

How you keep your reading place is a very personal preference. Do you treasure that fine sewn-in ribbon that is always there as a place-keeper? Do you have a treasured collection of your own book-marks, or do you prefer to use the book's paper cover? Do you bend down the page corners? What would your mother say! How do you go back for a second time to those special locations?

Remembering passages from a book is also a part of an individual reader's style. Some mark in the book; some use pencil, some ink or a highlighter. The small "sticky note" proved to be a godsend for many who wanted to note something useful or memorable. It is the paper equivalent of "googling," granting access to information time and again. The book's catalog number allows it to join others of like subject.

Dewey was my first love. I first organized a library with the help of an early mentor and the Dewey decimal system at my small high school. I established a multimedia "mental health" library as a college class project, and later another of a similar nature at my first workplace. I later learned to love "LC,"the cataloging system used by university libraries, and adopted it for my professional book collection. Since I retired I recently decided to distribute this collection to my therapist friends, and have thus happily bid farewell to many thumbed volumes.

My remaining cherished books live in "the stacks" in the dining room down the hall, sorted by LC-numbers on their backs. I must confess here to being a little obsessive-compulsive, but that is how it is when you are in love. I am looking forward to reading some for the first time and to rereading others. And in between I will be visiting the stacks at my local lending library, in anticipation of the next liasson with one of my grand passions.

Technorati tags: random-thoughts books hobbies my life personal writing and poetry reading library