In Praise of Bookkeeping

I have a confession to make.  I sold a book.  Once.  In the summer 1959.  It was a dry textbook from a dreary course I’d taken during my freshman year in medical school the year before.  Another student wanted to buy it and I needed the five bucks.  It was a difficult decision, but it was in my formative years, early in the development of my passion, so I foolishly sold it, reasoning I’d never need it again.  It is a mistake I have not repeated; I’d still like to have that book back.  I’d like to feel the pages, to think of my classmates and professors, to recall the smells of the histology laboratory, and to see what I underlined and the notes I made.

It is no exaggeration to say that I love books.  I like to study their construction, to hold them, smell them, and fondle the pages.  I have no use for bookmarks, a dog-eared page is easier and better; it leaves a mark, a footprint on the journey.  I underline words and phrases and make notes in the margins.  A lost dust jacket is a tragedy.  When the tale is completed I make an entry on the frontispiece that includes the date and place I was when I finished it, a comment and my signature.  I’ve finished books in Antarctica, in a tent on the Serengeti Plain, at poolside in Phnom Penh, Istanbul and Cairo, in the South China Sea, on the Acropolis, on countless airplanes, dozens of ships, and in the homes we lived.  It is a bountiful thrill to open a book at random, to study how my signature has changed, and to relive the experience.  I never tire of it.

My home is populated by people, dogs and books.  Like unruly children and dogs my books know no order—they spill, they tumble, they lean, they stand upright and sprawl recumbent, as disorderly as life.  They fill my shelves; my nightstand runneth over.  My library, if you want to call it that, is not organized.  It has been suggested on more than one occasion that I catalogue my collection.  This is a bad idea, one that smacks of trying to improve on nature by rearranging the petals on a flower.  I’d just as soon see the cave art at Lascaux chiseled out and rearranged, stags here, antelopes there.  Besides, it’s fun to go prospecting for a volume; there’s a lot to discover on the trip.

I recoil at neighborhood book sales—all of those orphans, abandoned, or worse still, sold, by heartless owners.  How do they do it?  I’d as soon abandon a child.  When applied to a book very word “used” is an offense, implying a lesser value rather than a greater one.  These are experienced books, books with added character, all the more valuable by virtue of participation, of history, of utility.  They deserve better.

I don’t borrow books.  If I read a borrowed book I’d have to return it.  This has never happened.  Nor do I lend books, especially those I’ve read; I’d as soon let someone examine my bank account.  I don’t accept books other people have read, because after my reading it wouldn’t be entirely mine.  This admittedly peculiar mindset sometimes leads to difficulties; I am forever having to explain myself.  Recently one of my students gave me a book.  I thought it was a gift—it was pristine, obviously new.  I read it.  I made marks all over it, including smudge of marinara sauce, a mark of character, on one of the pages.  Later it became clear that it was a loan; she had read the book, enjoyed it and expected to get it back.  It was out of print.  I had to make a deal with the devil and buy a “used” book to return to her.  It was difficult to explain, but she was gracious and accepted it.

Once I was in a coffee shop in London, one of those coffee-culture places that slow-roasts its own beans.  In the window was a sign that read, “There is no such thing as instant coffee.”  In the same spirit there is no such thing as a book-on-tape or an electronic-book.  Neither has the substance or permanence of the real thing.  A real book, once read, is a piece of mind, an artifact of history, and an intensely personal possession.  So buy the real thing, read it, leave your mark, and by all means, dear reader, keep that book.

© March 10, 2001

Note added April 13, 2021. I had a change of heart after we moved into the Mayfair. I had bookshelves built down one side of a long hallway and arranged them in chronological order. See Confessions of a Bookie.