Books Shelved

Two recent blog posts : Bedside Revisited and The top shelf, made me think of how closely the books we have acquired, the manner and place of their acquisition, and where and how we keep them, are tied to the circumstances and phases of our lives. I became conscious of the fact that I no longer keep books on my bedside table and that I no longer have a top shelf, or almost any shelf, of prized books.

But more of that later.

My first significant woodworking achievement was a bookshelf unit that spanned one entire wall of the family room of our new house. That structure satisfied one of our greatest needs at the time, finding a fitting place to store and display my family’s prime possessions, our books.


There were books that had been inherited or received as gifts, books we had bought in various corners of the world where we travelled, books from our university days, books we read to our babies and books we thought they would need later to learn about their world as they grew up. There were those expensive, large “coffee table” books full of impressive illustrations and photographs of places and artworks with which we planned to grace our livingroom in the distant future when we would be living a life of more refined leisure in our retirement years.

There was space on those shelves for the standard 19 inch tv of the time and a simple stereo, but there was no doubt that the books were the stars.

In a way that bookshelf was an indication that we had “arrived” or at least were close to that plateau of life. It was several removes from the boards supported by pairs of cinder blocks that indicated you were setting out on your own after graduation and discovered that all you could afford was a small, shared apartment with minimal furniture.

Before that I do not even recall having bookshelves in the room I rented, along with a roommate, as our digs, while attending university. At that time we must have just dropped our books wherever we were when we moved on to some other activity.

In high school everyday we carried our entire stock of textbooks in our arms, no backpacks then, between school and home, from a desk at school to a desk at home. I suppose that was one reason why students in those days didn’t fight very frequently: you would have to lay down your books to do so and pick them up again afterwards. Few conflicts were worth such bother. It also gave a shy adolescent an opportunity to get to talk to a girl by offering to carry her books, or to get a clear signal of interest if you, a boy, had to stand in the bus and a giggling schoolgirl offered to balance your books on her lap as she sat.

Whenever I moved, from apartment to apartment, from country to country, from coast to coast, my books accompanied me and I would install them in pride of place at my destination. As time and distances between moves increased, so did the difficulty and complexity of the logistics.

Downsizing for retirement living radically changed my relationship with books.

Moving from California and the house where I had lived for more than twenty-five years to a smaller home in Seattle, some one thousand miles away, meant that I had to part with almost my entire collection of books. Each book that I gave away, donated to the local public library, sold at the garage sale for pennies, or finally, just had to dump, caused some sad reflection, some pain, even, because each had been associated with a friend, a special circumstance, a choice.

Enter electronic books.

I do miss the sensuousness of holding and paging through a real book, of sweeping satisfied glances along the spines of treasured books lined up on shelves, a testament to one’s evolution of tastes and knowledge, mementos of friendships and pleasurable events.

Rows of books have been replaced by drop-down menus on my laptop and iPhone. I can take along several e-books for longhaul flights across the Paciific or the Atlantic or a week of cruising without violating the constantly decreasing baggage allowance or necessitating a visit to the orthopedist, nursing a painful over-stressed lower back, on my return.

And with the iPhone or Kindle, even though I can’t curl up with it as with a real book, I can still read in bed.