Books: you can’t take ’em with you

Friday, March 15, 2024

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Books: you can’t take ’em with you

You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, who you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.

My friend Mike recently visited his daughter, who is a librarian. He sat in her living room surrounded by books, and he was in love. Her books, kept through a lifetime of travel, school and finally settling into one place, included a set of Britannica, the encyclopedia which never stops giving. Mike also has a set of his own, in fact my parents’ set, which he received with great gratitude a year or two ago, after my mother died.

Mike’s encyclopedia is shelved in a magnificent case, fitting of its history and inviting him to read, one volume at a time, page by page. That set should last him the rest of his life. Our own Britannica is in the dining room, on a top bookshelf more than six feet above the floor. I can just reach it, but I rarely do.

Mike was here a week or so ago, in our Urbana home, and he told me about his daughter’s place. “Like yours,” he said. “Books in every room. If she sleeps for 13 hours, I will never be bored.”

And I thought, “Well, that’s right.” I looked through my mind into all the rooms of our house, and there they were. Books. Books in every room.

One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

Walking in from the street into our waiting room, there are not only books, but hundreds of DVDs and CDs, musicals, spiritual stories and animated movies. But the books are what I notice.

This, I guess, is our showcase. Shelves above and below the bank of windows, and then especially, a high case of seven shelfs filled with books sorted by author. On top, Ron Rolheiser, David Benner, and Eugene Peterson. A second shelf interrupts the writers with books for retreats, daily prayers and Sabbath. The third shelf holds C. S. Lewis and Walter Wangerin. Books by and about Thomas Merton fill most of two shelves. Picture books from Shutterfly, Shelby Foote’s The Civil War, Eudora Welty and Wendell Berry, large books of photographs from monasteries and the deep South, a big book of lyrics by Bob Dylan, and Chronicles of the Pope.

On the bottom shelf there’s a copy of the Valparaiso University Beacon from 1971, the school’s yearbook with notes and poems by … me. And then at last The Encyclopedia of Immaturity.

Through the door in our dining room are more ceiling-to-floor shelves of books. Years ago I sorted out the female authors and put all their books on these shelves, just below the Britannica. (Mr. Foote and Miss Welty were good friends from Mississippi, so I made an exception for her.)

Through another door into our living and TV room, shelf after shelf of classics and what I deem to be spiritual books. I built all these shelves, but they aren’t quite the quality of the others, painted white and bowed because they are too long and too full. I need to flip some of them over.

Back in my counseling office another bookshelf, which fills in what was a wide passage from living to dining rooms when we moved here 35 years ago. These are sorted by topic, from marriage to child-rearing to depression to the Enneagram … and so on. On the other side of the room a shelf fills an old window space. On the top shelf a simple wooden plaque with a single word: “SIMPLIFY.”

There are no longer any cookbooks in the kitchen. We’ve moved them around, but there are shelves for them in what once was Andi’s bedroom. In the boys’ bedroom, now filled with our computer and other office-y things, more shelves (bought when Border’s went out of business in Champaign), which house poetry and fiction, history, philosophy and Christmas books, along with a shelf of Zane Grey westerns I kept from Mom’s, and a number of books about farm life in the early 1900’s. This is where I keep my own journals as well.

The book collecting began with Mom, who bought hundreds of books at library and garage sales, then sold some of them on half.com, Amazon and eBay. She sorted and kept them everywhere, including on the shelves of a large unplugged upright freezer.

In Champaign we have a used bookstore called Orphan’s Treasure Box. Behind the store is a shed with an always-openable garage door. Inside, our community of readers can leave box after box of books. Many of our cookbooks went into that shed.

I wonder why these books continue to hold my attention. I will never read them all. I can’t take them with me. When Mom died in 2021, she was 99 years old. She read every day until she died. She couldn’t take her books along, either, and we sorted and sorted and sold some and gave most of them away to Orphan’s Treasure Box and the Lincoln Goodwill Store. We were surprised that none of the three libraries in Lincoln, Illinois had any place to put her books.

Along the way I spent $25 for a lifetime membership with LibraryThing, and for awhile I catalogued everything. LibraryThing honors the membership, though I haven’t posted anything since 2020. It tells me I have 3,673 books in 23 collections, written by 2,184 authors. It tells me lots more: one of my books, for example, TCM Cinematic Cities: New York, is owned by 13 other members, including “dwbbks.” I share ownership of 59 other books with dwbbks.

Both Mom and I discovered the miracle of Kindle books about five years before she died, and we gathered up (today’s listing) 7,910 electronic books, which can all be kept in one place, instantly accessible, highlightable and searchable. Margaret points out that these books, like the paper and board books on our shelves, won’t pass into the next life with me either. But every day I search posts from Bookbub and EarlyBird Books and Amazon, just to find another book or two at that day’s bargain prices.

I won’t ever read them all, but the journey is its own reward – the search, the selecting the sense of ownership. Quite often, it takes my breath away.

I counted up the shelves yesterday – there are 89 downstairs, and a few more upstairs. Most of them are full of books.

Please come by sometime and pick out a few for yourself. I can’t take ‘em with me.

They tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.

 (Acts 10, Psalm 118, Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians 5, John 20)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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