Books

Enough of a title in itself, some of us would argue.

I have had a long fascination with books. My son would call it a mania, as he pointed out, laughing uproariously as he read aloud the quiz from the book Bibliomania. “Are books the first thing people notice when they walk into your house?” He answered for me, “No. They are the only thing.”

For a childhood birthday party, my mom suggested to someone that she get me a copy of King of the Wind, Marguerite Henry’s story of the Godolphin Arabian, because for months my name had been the only one on the library’s check out card (back when books in the library had check out cards). And there, at the party, holding in my hands a copy of the book that I did not need to give back when its borrowing time was up, I entered the world of owning books.

That was not the only book I could call mine; I had many childhood books, the Little Golden Books, story books passed on from my mom’s childhood. But to have a book that was something I wanted to read, a book that did not reflect the interests of someone else in the family: that was new. I was hooked into books (paraphrasing the title of another book).

I can justify book ownership. Some of them I need for teaching: reference books, books about the writers we discuss in class, books illustrating how people dressed to make the descriptions in a story clearer. Some of them are reading books for winter nights, or summer afternoons, or when I need to enter a world that’s less frantic than 200 cable channels available through a series of remote-clicks. Some of them tell me how I should do things like repair a piece of furniture, and my mind thinks it understands even if my hands do not have the skills to follow the directions. Those are the books that I could validate to my son and anyone commenting that I certainly have a lot of books. (Over the years there have been a few people of that opinion.)

There’s something to be argued, though, for simply having books. Turn the page of an old library book, and your fingers feel the difference on the page where hundreds of fingers have worn the piece of paper thinner. How many people had the time, made the time, to go through the book. I will likely never meet them, but we have enjoyed the same book.

Books give us space. I enjoy the Internet. I like having quick communication. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to sit down with something that doesn’t want me to engage in noise, except for the turning of pages. And the interrupting of others when I read aloud a particularly good passage in the book. My son claims I have forever ruined one of his horror stories because at the same time I was reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, and insisted on sharing the hilarious sections.

Books offer solace. Sometimes I already know how the story turns out; in rereading I can appreciate the technical aspects of story development, I can attend to the background characters, I can observe the symbolism. I can simply enjoy reading a story I have read many times before: spending time with a good friend. How many times have I reread The Forsyte Saga since the summer afternoon I sat in a lawn chair, turning the pages of a library copy? I don’t know, but now (just like that birthday present book) I have a copy of my own. Opening it and reading John Galsworthy’s dedication [“To My Wife I dedicate the Forsyte Saga in its entirety, believing it to be of all my work the least unworthy of one without whose encouragement, sympathy and criticism I could never have become even such a writer as I am”], I think, Wow. I think about Galsworthy’s life, and the parallel examples of literary love (the Brownings for example, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I Love Thee”). I think about how The Forsyte Saga grew into quite a few books about that society, as it changed from Victorian into Edwardian times and beyond. Galsworthy’s character Soames Forsyte received an obituary [not a book review notice] in London’s newspaper, when Galsworthy sent Soames into the literary great beyond.

Books tell us about the people who wrote them. One of the things I ponder is: What’s this writer’s message? If I could condense a writer’s message into one or two sentences, what would all his/her books be about? Society forms people; or You can/can’t go home again; or Give your all and you will succeed; or good will eventually triumph. I wonder if the books we write change their message over our writing careers, or if our characters change; but our core message, no matter how the plots change and the characters vary, remains the same.

There's not much to dislike about books.