When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. -- Erasmus
One afternoon in Cape Town I sat in my little room at University House and took inventory. This must have been in June, winter in the southern hemisphere, and it had been raining steadily for most of a week. I was virtually alone in the student residence; the others had packed off for vacation. With an umbrella and plastic slicker I'd ventured out once or twice to the Pig and Whistle, where I favored the Ploughman's Lunch, but to sustain life I'd laid in a supply of tinned sardines, cheddar and swiss cheese, Hob Nobs, apples, Carr's Water Biscuits, ginger cookies, Hershey bars, biltong, sausage and a pot of jam. I had a little electric coil that would bring a cup of water to a boil, a jar of Nescafe, a box of sugar and some Instant Postum.
Not my office, but very close
I wrote in my journal: "I have not spoken to anyone since Monday. The radio is playing 'Downtown' by Petula Clerk. I've been reading some Shaw -- Man and Superman. I'm wearing jeans, my cable knit sweater and my Keds. I've made coffee and am waiting for it to cool. Let it be recorded that at this moment I am happy."
University House was a two-sided row of rooms opening from common sidewalks. It had been built for troops during the war, and now housed graduate students. The water poured down the roof and collected in an exposed gutter which hurried it along somewhere downhill. I have long had this peculiar love of sitting very close to the rain and yet remaining protected--in a cafe, on a porch, next to a window, or there in that room, which had two iron-paned windows and a Dutch door. After a warning from our house mother, I'd gone to the OK Bazaar and purchased a small electric heater.
"What do I really need that isn't here in this room?" I asked. "Its dimensions are a little more than twice as wide and deep as I am tall. I don't know, maybe 150 square feet? Here I have the padded wood chair in which I sit tilted against the wall, my feet braced on my straight desk chair. I am holding the three-inch-thick Paul Hamlyn edition of Shaw's complete plays. This room contains: A wood single bed, an African blanket covering it, a wood desk and its gooseneck lamp, a small dresser with a mirror over it, my portable typewriter, a small wardrobe containing my clothes, a steamer trunk serving as a coffee table, and two bookcases, filled to overflowing. What more do I actually need?"
To this inventory I would today add: A rice cooker, knife and cutting board, to prepare my meals; a small refrigerator; and a MacBook and nice speakers to supply the internet, music, videos and TV. There wasn't room for a proper TV.Chaz and I have lived for 20 years in a commodious Chicago house with three floors, a furnished basement apartment and an exercise room we built on the roof-top deck. This house is not empty. To my 1965 edition of Shaw, which cost me about two quid and now sells for $119, Chaz and I have added, I dunno, maybe 3,000 or 4,000 books, countless videos and CDs, lots of art, rows of photographs, rooms full of comfortable furniture, a Buddha from Thailand, two elephants from India, African chairs and statues, and who knows what else.
Of course I cannot do without a single one of these possessions, including more or else every book I have owned since I was seven, starting with Huckleberry Finn. I still have all the Penrod books, and every time I look at them, I'm reminded of Tarkington's inventory of the contents of Penrod's pants pockets. After reading it a third time, I jammed my pockets with a pocket knife, a Yo-Yo, marbles, a compass, a stapler, an oddly-shaped rock, a hardball, a ball of rubber bands and three jawbreakers. These, in an ostensible search for a nickel, I emptied out on the counter of Harry Rusk's grocery, so that Harry Rusk could see that I was a Real Boy.
My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may -- need is the word I use -- to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed. That 1957 best-seller by James Could Cozzens was eviscerated in a famous essay by Dwight Macdonald, who read through that year's list of fiction best sellers and surfaced with a scowl. It and the other books on the list have been rendered obsolete, so that his essay is cruelly dated. But I remember reading the novel late into the night when I was 14, stirring restlessly with the desire to be possessed by love.
I cannot throw out these books. Some are protected because I have personally turned all their pages and read every word; they're like little shrines to my past hours. Perhaps half were new when they came to my life, but most are used, and I remember where I found every one. The set of Kipling at the Book Nook on Green Street in Champaign. The scandalous The English Governess in a shady book store on the Left Bank in 1965 (Obilisk Press, $2, today $91). The Shaw plays from Cranford's on Long Street in Cape Town, where Irving Freeman claimed he had a million books; it may not have been a figure of speech. Like an alcoholic trying to walk past a bar, you should see me trying to walk past a used book store.Other books I can't throw away because--well, they're books, and you can't throw away a book, can you? Not even a cookbook from which we have prepared even a single recipe, for it is a meal preserved and happy time then shared, in printed form. The very sight of Quick and Easy Chinese Cooking by Kenneth H. C. Lo quickens my pulse. Its pages are stained by broth, sherry, soy sauce and chicken fat, and so thoroughly did I master it that I once sought out Ken Lo's Memories of China on Ebury street in London and laid eyes on the great man himself, dining alone in a little room near the entrance. A book like that, you're not gonna throw away.
Hob Nobs, plain and chocolate
I can't throw out anything. Perhaps I foresaw that when I wrote my journal entry. I possibly don't require half the shirts I have ever owned. But look at this faded Chamois Cloth Shirt from L. L. Bean, purchased through the mail in about 1973 from a two-inch ad in the back of The New Yorker: The longer you wear it, the more it feels like chamois! I've been wearing it a long, long time. I can't say it feels like chamois, never having worn chamois. But I want to work on it some more.I also need this tea mug from Keats House in Hampstead, even though its handle is broken off. I need it to hold these ball-point pens I had printed with the words, No good movie is too long. No bad movie is short enough. They were 100 for $39, I think. The ink has all dried up over the years, but I still need need them in order to provide a purpose for the mug.
And here are my thick reference books. Not only the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, but the small tiny-type edition of the complete OED, which came with its own magnifying glass. And Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the Cambridge Companion to English Literature, the 1967 edition of Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion, a hardbound London A to Z from 1975, and two dozen books on the occult, including the Tarot, the I Ching and The Autobiography of Aleister Crowley, who was a certified flywheel, but surely wrote one of the best of Edwardian autobiographies (Crowley explained that he invented modern British mountain climbing in the Himilayas after his predecessors "had themselves carried up by Sherpas").
In idle hours I like to leaf through my well-worn leather-bound 1970 edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, (£5, used)which offers entries not to be found elsewhere:
Jack system An Australian phrase denoting the pursuit of one's own interests at the expense of others.Giotto's O. The old story goes that the Pope, wishing to employ artists from all over Italy, send a messenger to collect specimen of their work. When the man approached Giotto (c. 1267-1337), the artist paused for a moment from the picture he was working on and with his brush drew a perfect circle on a piece of paper. In surprise the man returned to the Pope, who, appreciating the perfection of Giotto's artistry and skill by his unerring circle, employed Giotto forthwith.
October Club. In the reign of Queen Anne, a group of High Tory MPs who met at tavern near Parliament to drink October Ale and abuse the Whigs.
Now here is the Penguin paperback of Aspley Cherry Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, the story of his agonizing 900-mile trek through the darkness of the Antarctic winter to investigate the mating habits of the penguin. The book is as long as the walk. I may likely not read it a second time. Do I require two later editions? Of course I do. You just never know. And the second and third editions of the Columbia Encyclopedia? You bet.Chaz gave me this facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio. Will I ever read it? Not with that spelling and typography. But I will always treasure it. I look at it sometimes, and wonder at the genius of the man. What, for that matter, of my other editions of Shakespeare? The little blue volumes of the Yale Shakespeare, and the editions by Oxford, the Easton Press and the Folio Society? Handsome books, finely made. But I always read only my battered and underlined old Riverside Shakespeare from college, because it was edited by G. Blakemore Evans, and he was my professor, you see. I tried reading a Folio volume once. Just the right page size, one (not two) columns to the page, elegant typography. I just couldn't. I felt like I was cheating on G. Blakemore.
My possessions are getting away from me. We have an agreement. My office is my office. Chaz has her own book-filled office, and takes care that the rest of the house is clean and orderly. My office has a glass door with this gilt lettering:
The Ebert Company, Ltd.
Fine Film Criticism since 1967.
I have not been been able to even get into the storage closet of my office for four years. The room is lined floor to ceiling with film books, and the shelves of directors and actors with names beginning H, I, J, K and L are blocked by piles of stuff on the floor. What? You expect me to throw out my first Tandy 100? And there's a 40-year run of Sight and Sound there somewhere.
I have a book (here somewhere) named Rodinsky's Room, by Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair, about a mysterious London cabalistic scholar named David Rodinsky who in 1969 disappeared from his attic above a synagogue on Princelet Street in the East End. His flat was strangely left undisturbed for years, and when it was opened all was exactly as he left it -- his books, papers, possessions, even a a pot of porridge on the stove.
That's what I should do. Just turn the key and walk away, and move into 150 square feet. Get me a little electric coil to boil the coffee water. Just my Shakespeare, some Henry James, and of course Willa Cather, Colette and Simenon. Two hundred books, tops. Brewer's. But no. there wouldn't be room for Chaz, and I would miss her terribly. That I could never abide. And what if I needed one of these books?
¶
"My name is Susie and I'm a 22 year old girl living in Arizona. Diet soda and used books fuel my existence. I love how the kindle is marketed as a 'wireless reading device' - isn't that what a book is?"
¶
50,000 Books, El Cajon, California
¶
George Whitman of Shakespeare & Co., Paris. Many of you may have met him.
¶
He has left nothing to say about nothing or any thing. -John Keats, letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (22 Nov. 1817)
¶
Dear Mr. Ebert,
First of all, thank you for blogging about books.
In a day when Steve Jobs can be perfectly serious when he said "Nobody reads anymore," it's good to see someone from the world of film bring some focus back to the written word.
One thing, however: how come no props for the Jeremy Ahn's short stories, novels, or poetry, bro?
I would trade my signed OOP Criterion Collection Brazil DVD for a blurb from the Ebert.
From one Pimp Supreme to another,
Jeremy Ahn
I have a confession. I keep a copy of Stock Trading for Dummies on my nightstand purely for aesthetic reasons. Sure I've read through it, but by the end I discovered I have little interest in the book's subject or the information contained therein. Still, I keep it around in case anyone sees. Can't have the girls thinking I completely lack all ambition, can I?
Of far more importance on both mine and my best friend's shelf rest thick, worn paperback copies of James Clavell's complete Asian Saga, the covers weak already from the sheer size of the damned things, and weaker still from our repeated reads through them. We wear those novels like a badge.
You really weren't kidding when you wrote, "We provide full service here." Thanks!
I was raised by my father to believe that throwing away books was wrong. I have been homeless a couple of times over the last few years, and while I managed to save my books for a long time I ultimately had to give them to a friend to sell. He'd let me crash at his place for a month rent free and I ended up storing them at his place after that, so I thought it only fair. Now I'd rather have been in the streets than to have lost all of those books.
I've since restarted my collection, and in just over a year I have probably 100-200 books. I am glad to know that I'm not the only one who ends up with an almost embarrassing number I've yet to read. Lately I've just been greedy, getting as many as I can. Used bookstores are indeed one of the better parts of capitalism--if you ever go to Portland, ME I'd recommend Yes Books on Congress Street. The books are packed into shelves, stacked eight feet high, placed a claustrophobic distance apart and even still you have to dodge loose stacks of them at every turn and corner. The smell is intoxicating.
As for Crowley, say what you will about him, he is one of the smartest men to have lived in the last few centuries--a figure somewhat akin to Leonardo, I think. He was a polymath, a polyglot and perhaps the most famous Mage of all time. I have yet to read the Autobiography, but when I get it I don't imagine it'll go unread for long.
I also think Susie and I would get along swimmingly. I wonder what she thinks of homeless guys...
Scintillating!
Here's a diametrically different viewpoint!
Your journal entry (from the 2nd paragraph of this entry) made me smile. It reminded me of reading Don DeLillo's "Underworld" near the end of my junior year, sitting in the middle of the campus, mostly deserted and just enjoying words and the world and being happy. I've made it a point to buy the books I read, whenever possible (though I do love being in libraries too), just because, like you said, you never know. I can lend it out, open it up and read underlined sections and margin notes, or read it again if I like. There is no worse feeling than finding myself out and about without a book. And it is my deep belief that one of the most pleasing phrases in the English language is "hardback book." Happy reading and thinking and whatever else.
Here's a journal entry of mine from the 9th of July 2001, when I was the occupant of a 120 square feet room that contained: a steel desk and chair, a single bed with detachable poles at the four corners for a mosquito net, and two barred windows that looked out into the jungle.
P.S. At the time, I was a 22-year old volunteer with a Jesuit Mission that was working on drought-relief and water-harvesting with secluded tribes in the northern hinterlands of Gujarat state, India.
"Brought back to reality with an inglorious THUD - My first real contact with alcoholism in action, screw-ups as regards my room and facilities (basic), etc. has put me back in touch with the erratic nature of emotion. It can lift you to buoyancy with little stimulus and can plunge you to the depths of depression without so much as a whisper. Maybe those anti-depressants can help, the ones that I have been so studiously avoiding.
On a brighter note, reading has been good with all the rich variety of literature available. It provides sweet, blessed distraction to the mundane quality of life here, especially when work tactlessly forced upon invades the special space that privacy grants to those who value it.
Presently reading:
The Truth Will Make You Free - Swami Shilananda s.j.
Krishna and Christ - Dr. Ishanand Vempeny s.j.
The Rituals of Our Lives - Robert Fulghum
ABCs of the Human Mind - Readers Digest
... and continuing my study of;
The Message of the Upanisads - Swami Ranganathananda.
Thank God for reading."
Love your work, Roger!
Books, books and more books. That's a home to me. Without books, it's just a house.
I own maybe 3000 books all told, probably many more if you count magazines and weird odd and ends like "Criswell Predicts: Your future from now until the year 2000". Of those I have read maybe 1000.
Three of my favorites:
The Poltergeist 2 novelization by James Kahn, both because it is a genuinely good book that's far superior to the dreadful film, and because it is the first real book I ever read that didn't have pictures in it. I sat on the porch and sweated through paragraphs, trying to make sense of things without a cartoon character acting it out for me. It was bliss.
"It" by Stephen King. This is the second book I ever read and the first "proper" book. I have fond memories of spending all night reading, then going into a fitful light sleep so that I could read some more the second I wake up.
"Ghost Story" by Peter Straub. Oddly enough it's rather similar to the King work. I bought it because I'd seen the movie (which I liked) and thought it would be similar. It is not, and what a delight to discover this.
Books are wonderful things that stimulate the imagination and let it soar. Even sillier books about alien abductions or ghosts are worth reading simply because they propose that the world is so vast and rich in experience. I hate to use a cliche, but they expand your mind.
I could live without music or films, I could not live without books.
Hob Nobs look really good. Do they still make them?
Ebert: For under $14, you can try three varieties. Scroll down to :"Frequently Bought Together."
http://www.amazon.com/Mcvities-Hob-Nobs-300-G/dp/B000VJD5LQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=grocery&qid=1254840541&sr=8-1-catcorr .
Maybe you ought to listen to good 'ole Jerry Seinfeld:
-----------------------------------------------------
JERRY: So forget about the books. Did you read them?
GEORGE: Well, yeah.
JERRY: What do you need them for?
GEORGE: I don't know. They're "books."
JERRY: What is this OBSESSION people have with books? They put them in their houses - like they're trophies. What do you NEED it for AFTER you READ it?
-----------------------------------------------------
At least with movies, they have that more accessible "re-discovery" factor. Plus, this may conflict with purists, but it's the 21st century. All these books can possibly be digitized or have digitized versions of themselves so you can probably hire someone to store them all on your hard drive.
But going back to your predicament of not wanting to throw the ones you "haven't" read out. Could it possibly be some subconscious desire to hold onto all the memories behind the book? Even though some of those memories are quite meaningless?
I remember an a relative giving me a long and boring 1000 page book for my birthday; I have not since read that book, but I keep for a reason I still cannot comprehend. So I guess I am in the boat as you.
Btw, Mr Ebert. I have been a loyal reader since I was 13. I would read your reviews ONLINE and subsequently would watch the 'GREAT' films you would recommend. I am 19 now and just want to say you have really broadened my perceptions and opinions on films and culture. This is my first comment on the blog, and hopefully it won't be my last!
Thanks for the education!
I could not possibly keep all the books I have read over the years, much less those I have possessed but never gotten around to reading. Right now I would estimate I have around 2000 books in the house, many in unsteady stacks that my insurance company would not approve of. I prune the ever growing numbers at every opportunity. Some I sell at used book stores, but this raises the difficulty that I usually get talked into selling them for store credit which then inevitably leads to bringing more books home. Better yet is to lend them to friends. Many of those never come back. I have trouble getting friends to understand they are doing me a favor not to return them. There are a few irreplaceable out of print books I won't lend out, but not many. I often think it would be so much easier just to pitch some in the trash, but I can't quite make myself do it.
I've been out of college for two years and have recently cleaned out my room.
In the process I have come across many books I rushed through or have simply forgotten. I put them on my desk and have decided to give them another go.
Halfway through TROPIC OF CANCER and about three chapters into THE HAUNTED SCREEN. I feel like an English major once again, only this time I'm enjoying myself much more.
Who would have thought two years would make that much of a difference?
Great post Roger. As always....
I greatly enjoyed this post. I am still in college (in fact, at this very moment sitting in my $10 Goodwill armchair with my feet on a $5 coffee table [admittedly with MacBook, speakers and internet]) and it is a struggle every time I move from home to school to pick the books that I think I will be most likely to wake up in the middle of the night and want to read.
I'm not certain that my Barnes & Noble classics editions will appreciate in value like your books have, however.
Books: A Love Story
I combined my love of art and books. I don’t think in terms of weeks or months, but rather in terms of years or decades—I’m beginning to sound like Nosferatu. Anyway, I spent ten years building up a library of Franklin Library, Easton Press, and other fine quality books, and of course just ordinary hardbacks. It served the purpose of both a hobby and a passion—Goodwills, flea markets, and the like. Lots of fun. And unlike many hobbies, the investment in money, time, and memories remains.
I stopped collecting books when I ran out of room for more. But there they are ready and waiting anytime I need them. And I do need them. Old friends from over 2,000 years ago up till recent times speak to me. Their wisdom keeping me uplifted when I’m feeling down and friendless. Homer, Epictetus, Aristotle, Plato, the ancient Greek playwrights, Dante, Plutarch, etc. The books that nonreaders laugh at but have sadly never read. Up till recent times: “Out of Africa,”both the book and the film are my favorites in both categories. And they complement one another unlike any such combination I’ve come across. And then there’s Truman Capote. What a writer! I couldn’t handle “In Cold Blood.” Too sad. But his other novels and his short stories are such a joy.
Of the many of your articles which I have read, enjoyed and admired, I am especially fond of this one. Perhaps it is because I am able to relate so passionately to its subject matter. (Especially this: "Like an alcoholic trying to walk past a bar, you should see me trying to walk past a used book store.") Savannah, Georgia, where I have lived for five years, has one of the most antiquated used book stores you will likely ever see. My girlfriend used to openly claim to the manager when we walked in that "[you] are responsible for his electric getting cut-off, I just want you to know that." In the meantime, don't feel bad about Finnegans Wake -- we all have that problem.
The first “grown up” book I have ever read was Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. I think I was six. Even as a kid, I was an avid reader, and my parents were kind (or wise) enough to let me discover literature in my own time. So they never stopped me from reading Conan The Barbarian, Superman, or Spider-Man. Conan was particularly integral to the way my tastes developed – it led to an interest in mythology, which served as a direct link to literature. So when I sat down to read about Buck’s anthropomorphic adventures in the frigid Yukon, I felt right at home, since I could associate his travails with those of Jason or Perseus.
That first copy of The Call of the Wild is at my parents’ home in Ankara. The last time I was there this summer, I almost picked it up again – but then I decided to leave it on the shelf, standing there proudly among other childhood favourites: Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Book of Dede Korkut, etc.
My books are now in three separate places – in my living room, stacked away under the two sofas in the guest bedroom, and my parents’ place. The library in my living room contains the most recently purchased ones, as well as my perennial favourites. It is there you will find the complete works of George Orwell, PG Wodehouse, and Evelyn Waugh. I have annotated all of them, of course; their margins full of scribbled notes from various stages of my life – different shades of ink and varied handwriting mirrors of my mood and soul through time and space.
It is on those shelves that Aengus still searches for his glimmering girl, Quinquireme rows home, and the Light Brigade readies for its final charge. John of Gaunt is there, reciting his immortal encomium to England; and also the fair Prince as he remembers the jester of most excellent fancy.
I keep coming back to Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, and The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins. How could I not – they’re beautiful. I can’t let go of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract or Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, either. AJP Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War is not on the book shelf, it’s on my night stand.
A la recherche du temps perdu is still waiting for me, and I aim to finish it before I, myself, am lost in time. I can’t believe I have yet to read the entirety of Gulliver’s Travels, but there we go. Soon, I’m sure.
Genre fiction got me into this mess, and I have a soft spot for it even still. I have most of the Arthur C Clarke books on the shelf – how could I not? The man wrote one of my favourite sentences (“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out”). And I find myself revisiting The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books quite often these days. I love the way The Black Dossier ends: our heroes find The Blazing World, a sort of heaven where characters from all of fiction live in harmony, as Prospero sings: “Here are brave banners of romance unfurled, to blaze forever in a Blazing World!”
Ebert: London and Stevenson both suffer from the impression that they wrote children's books. The Call of the Wild is an important novel.
Only bibliophiles can understand bibliophiles. Trying to explain my obsession with books to my wife has proved impossible.
Ebert: In case any spouses are reading this thread, this warning:
The words dust-catchers are grounds for divorce in some jurisdictions.
English satirist Terry Pratchett came up with the following equation--Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass. Therefore, any large collection of books of just a genteel black hole.
Ebert: That may explain why, as I am pulled helplessly into my books on Darwin, my information seems incapable of being sent back out to creationists.
My first reaction was: I wish my husband would read this. However, I don't think he'd be convinced that I need every book I have. I have a collection of dictionaries having studied Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese and art books and art exhibit catalogs. Some books are just lovely to look at and some have such great memories.
Some tea, ginger cookies and a computer (maybe a dog--an old one what just needs attention now and then to get you out for some exercise). I love a good bookstore and time to wander around and find whatever might happen to catch my interest.
Ebert: A dog! I knew my room was lacking something.
You've perfectly evoked my upstairs hallway, my bedside night table, and the end table in the living room where I sit and read when the kids are watching tv. I usually try to follow Groucho Marx's example when he commented that he always found television to be highly educational - whenever someone turned one on, he went into another room and read a good book.
Roger:
I sympathize with the need to keep a book around - you never know when you will want to refer back to it. My engineering colleagues have sizable collections that they continually refer back to - it is a necessity in that case.
I find that my books fall into a few categories:
- My very favorite books, that I will most likely savor (read) again and again. They age like fine wine. Correction - they do not age, but I do, and each time I read them, I come at the work from a new perspective, and often see things that were not apparent before.
- Picture and coffee table books, inspiration as I am an artist and photographer. Some are just for casual browsing, others are a reference. Some are wonderful historical documentaries of places and things that no longer exist.
- A few books kept because they are rare or signed, in addition to being a favorite. Those are the only ones I have duplicates of. One to read, the other to sit there for some reason. The lucky ones got read then signed - a personal treasure.
- Travel guides and other useful reference which I refer back to often.
- Books that I have read which I may not read again, but are good enough to keep and loan out when needed.
- Books I haven't read yet. I try to keep this queue down to 10 or so tomes.
Every once in a long while, I go through it and find a few things I no longer feel the need to keep around. I am reminded to do this when I move and get tired of lugging around the collection. I have become so good at moving however, that I know exactly how many boxes I need and what goes into each box. One day I will stop this habit and stay.
Like many avid readers, the books are in the living room and the television is in a room by itself, a home theater to which I occasionally wander to put in a blu-ray disc from netflix. The television is not a part of daily life, something I am reminded that is quite uncommon when visiting other people's homes. Without trying to sound too terribly snobby, I think this is generally to their detriment.
A good writer is a good reader as they say, and it's not surprising that you have such a collection.
I savor a real book with pages, and have not quite been able to embrace an electronic reader. Especially when I can buy used paperbacks for a few dollars on Amazon, and the reader costs hundreds on top of the high price they charge you for receiving your non-book bits.
--Mike
One more thought that I wish to impart is that there is always this nagging feeling, especially after watching Mad Max, that there is a not-insignificant chance that future history could turn out in a way that makes a printed book collection once again very valuable. I'd like to think not, but the books are a good insurance plan against boredom in the apocalypse. I think that plays a small part in the decision to have a 'collection' rather than to give away or make wider use of a public library.
Hate it when my book collection outgrows my book closet. Now I have to push them back and put the new ones on front, or make piles of them. Well, the closet looks used this way, and that is a good thing. Actually it doesn't really matter what a book collection looks like.
I believe Douglas Adams had a made-up word for the expression of a person checking out someone elses book collection.
By the way, Icelandic Sagas rule!
Hi,
Thanks for the post. Finally, someone who understands the feeling of not being able to throw away anything, especially books. My collection, though not as extensive as yours, covers a considerable area of my flat but once in every few months when I work up the courage to try to 'arrange' them according to some order, I never actually quite finish the task. The reason? I dig up something delightful and forgotten and start reading. I compare the experience with finding twenty rupee notes in old jeans pockets. I used to have a little electric coil in my college hostel as well, used to turn the trip down of the entire ground floor almost every time I tried plugging it in but definitely worth having it.
I completely agree Roger. A shelf full of books is one of the most glorious sights. A book is hours of entertainment or interesting facts or stories about people who died a hundred years ago or a million other things. It's just sitting there between the covers, waiting for me to discover it! That just thrills me, just to think that someone spent months or even years to make something and I have it, in my hand, waiting to be consumed. And while my collection does not even begin to approach yours, I probably have more books that I haven't read than ones that I have. Just like movies, it seems like every day I find a new book that I have to read! I fear that I will never have enough time to read them all (and I'm only 20!).
(I think you could move to a little room, but you may just have to make it 300 square feet so Chaz can fit!)
I miss many things about Cape Town.
But not the weather.
I struggle to convince my wife that I NEED all the books on my bookshelves. As you would expect of someone who has degrees in wildlife biology, most of them are about animals –birds in particular in my case. But one, “At a Bend in a Mexican River” by George Miksch Sutton, is the most influential book of my life. I’ve read and re-read it dozens of times since I discovered it in the Port Isabel (TX) public library when I was twelve. I’ve had my own copy since I was a few years older than that. My interest in birds took me to many places that Sutton mentioned in this and other books he wrote. A couple of years ago, I found a signed copy of it in the rare books section of a Half-Price Books in Austin. I’ve never had the slightest interest in collecting autographs, but I had to have this copy as well. They sit side by side on my bookshelf, and even when I’m not reading one of them, I frequently take one out to look at the magnificent watercolors that Sutton painted of Mexican birds – birds that seemed far too beautiful to actually exist when I was twelve. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to see many of them for myself.
Ebert: Sutton used, "very good," at $22:
http://cgi.ebay.com/At-a-Bend-in-a-Mexican-River.-:-George-Miksch-Sutton-%28Hardcover,-1972%29_W0QQitemZ341200405645QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090918?IMSfp=TL090918206004r28422
I struggle with my hoarding impulse. I hold on to personal objects out of a terrible fear that to lose (or actively jettison) them would be to lose (or actively jettison) the memories to which they are attached. Although there are good things about taking such an approach, I worry that I limit my personal growth by kowtowing to my terror of losing touch with the past (which I suspect is somewhat, perhaps largely baseless).
I wonder what I would do/how I would feel if all my possessions were destroyed in a house fire. Would I continue to function? Surely. Would the core of my person remain intact? Certainly. Not a pleasant thought, though, is it!
"For every piece you buy you have to move one piece out of your house". The advice given this week on how to keep your house orderly and clean. But how can one throw away those old books? This weekend my library will sell their old books. I'll be happy to walk around there and find some treasures. Of course I'll probably never read half the books I arrive home with but I can't pass a classic for €1. Right? Neither can I get rid of the books I bought there last year. Who knows, maybe I'll read them in twenty years. And the copy I found of War and Peace for €0.10, I just have to read that one of these days.
Collecting games has gotten easier recently. Lots of platforms arose which offer the games through downloads. I have fifty online games but they don't take up any shelf space. In ten years I wonder if all our books will be on online devices such as the kindle. Lots of books but still enough place to keep a dog.
PS. With Simenon you have a part of Belgium in your house. And I've never read one of his works! Any books by him that you can recommend?
Ebert: This is going to sound like a strange comment, but any lover of Simeon will know what I mean. It doesn't really matter which one you start with. Just start with the first Simenon that comes to hand. None of his novels are very long. There are two categories, Inspector Maigret and all the others.
http://www.trussel.com/f_maig.htm
Paul Theroux thinks he may be better than Camus:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3539880.ece
"Simenon takes some sorting out, because at first glance he seems easily classified and on second thoughts – after you have read fifty or sixty of his books – unclassifiable."
And here online is the complete English translation of possibly his first Simenon novel, published in 1929 under the name "Georges Sim." The famous style is already in place. Observation: Theroux is right. You should read several of his books so that the effect sinks in. At first glance Simenon may appear to be doing nothing at all.
http://www.trussel.com/f_maig.htm
I squealed with joy upon catching sight of this new entry! BOOKS! As now I get to think about them even more than I already do; smile.
"I also need this tea mug from Keats House in Hampstead, even though its handle is broken off." - Roger
I have a tea mug much the same, and for every crack and chip it bears like the Velveteen Rabbit, it becomes all the more dear to me. I throw nothing out either. I have my morning coffee in that mug. I've got a t-shirt from Paris with one their University's crests on it. And one from London with Cambridge. Both have been washed so many times they're practically translucent and holes are everywhere. They've never been so comfortable.
Books are everywhere in my apartment. Some tiny, others weighing a ton. Some very old and falling apart - others newly arrived and for which I thank you again. :)
One of my favorites is "The World of Edward Gorey" - as there's so much to be gleamed from his drawings...
http://www.gallerynucleus.com/item/image0/3258/7irq9u/book_edwardgorey_front.jpg
Another prized volume is "Paris Mon Amour" - Taschen Books...
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/photography/all/03851/facts.paris_mon_amour.htm
It's a B/W compilation of renowned photographers such as Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Jeanloup Sieff to name a few. It found me one afternoon while I was browsing in the jam packed basement of my favorite treasure trove - Salmangundi's - an old fashioned art & curiosity shop which sells unique gifts and toys; like shadow puppets from Jakarta. Smile.
And here, it's happy owners:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/225/451610879_f0918d4961.jpg
I've got "Anna of the Five Towns" by Arnold Bennett, The complete works of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice", an illustrated edition of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte - just to name a few of the classics. Along with countless graphics novels - "The Killing Joke" by Alan Moore my favorite of those. And let's not forget Harry Potter. :)
And then books filled with reference material, as you can never get enough of that when you're an artist - like "Decorative Antique Ironwork" by Dover Books; over 4,500 images of every conceivable key, latch, hinge, gate and door knocker, and everything else you could imagine.
I've got books about castles, cathedrals, Romantique, Islamic and Byzantine art and countless others devoted to Post-Impressionism and Western Art in general. I've got a little bit everything, including books about Film and stars like Ingrid Bergman and director/writers such as Woody Allen. Some guy named Roger Ebert, too. :)
Architecture and landscapes makes up a sizable chunk as well - "Treasure Houses of England" - that was a total score; on sale! A large book, in long format like a widescreen movie. Huge pan shots of Beaulieu, Blenheim Palace, Burghley House, Castle Howard, Chatsworth, Harewood House, Holkham Hall, Leeds Castle, Warwick Castle, Woburn Abbey - ahh!
And then of course, there are the cook books. :)
Having books in a room is like having company you genuinely enjoy. You're never alone when there's a book you love within reach. I don't think it's possible to have too many books, rather, just not enough space to put them.
I have few measuring sticks by which I judge a person. I try to be Zen and go with the flow. But of the sticks I do have, books are one of them.
If you don't like to read, if reading is a chore, if you don't have any books at all - then you and I cannot be friends for clearly, we're just non simpatico.
I live 3 blocks from a library which for me, is like living next to a crack house when you're an addict. I'm always in there taking out something. Or returning it to avoid a fine. And what a painful thing it is, to find a wonderful book... only to then have to part with it! Especially if it's out of print - as now it's like, the Holy Grail or something to find it, eh?
Here is such a book - "Spaghetti For Breakfast" by Sesyle Joslin (1965)
http://www3.telus.net/thiliasspace/Marie/jpegs/sb1.jpg
This is now one of the rarest children's books ever. As no one would willing part with a copy of it. It's just that wonderful. I've had to be content with scanning all the pages from it.
If you guys ever see it - pounce!
I rarely comment but I have read your blog since the first day. Today I saw the Erasmus quote at the top and was pretty certain I'd have to comment. I have been a stay at home mom for 19 years and just re-entered the workforce (my wish was to do so as a library assistant but our governor and state legislature seem determined to abolish libraries via outrageous funging cuts so there are no library jobs to be had...but I digress). With my first paycheck last week I bought books. I have never been a shoe shopper. Clothing shopping is an exercise in utter frustration. Grocery shopping, though I enjoy cooking, is merely a chore. Books, books, glorious books. I knew it was dnagerous for me to walk into Borders with a freshly cashed paycheck.
Like you, I have shelves of books waiting to be read. Some were gifts, others I treated myself to. Even more dangerous than Borders is our annual library used book sale. At a dollar for paperbacks and $2 for hardback how can you go wrong? On $3/bag days it's irresistible. On the last day when it's $1 for an entire bag of used books it's unrestrained madness.
I grew up surrounded by my dad's massive collection of books. I briefly worked in a bookstore when I was first married. It was more like play. I read to my babies before they could hold their heads up independantly. I fed them books to match their interests throughout the course of their lives. I chaired the Reading is Fundamental program in the local school so that 3 times a year I saw to it that every student in the school got a free book he or she could keep forever and ever. Matching a kid with a book he or she really wanted was so much fun. Seeing kids' faces light up when they realized they didn't have to bring the book back, nor did they have to pay for it, was a special joy.
I still have picture books from my own childhood and an old copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales. I remember my first chapter book. I remember the biographies that spoke to me and gave me courage. I've had the privilege of reading manuscripts that friends went on to have published. I enjoy the pride of seeing my own brother's short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Books are memories. Books are friends. Books are comfort.
They provide a certain sensual pleasure, whether old or new. There's a satisfying feeling in being the first to fully crack the spine of a new book and feel the pages part. The smell of a leatherbound volume is worth a moment of pause for a deep inhalation. Even the slight mustiness of an old book is like catching a whiff of an old flame's cologne.
Ultimately I want to be a librarian. Sometimes I wonder if I am more likely to work for someone else or perhaps start my own in my den. Eitherway, I get to be surrounded by books.
Thanks for this post. It's always a pleasure to find a kindred spirit where books are concerned.
And books are easier to carry around! I had abandoned furniture before for being heavy and having the need to be carried about for as long as I owned it. There are books that need to be left at home and some to be taken on the road. So I had abandoned books before but never have I thrown any out. I feel that the right time might come when those that I did not understand before might carry out its intentions in the future. My book collection is just the result of fishing around for the right one. This is the situation with my music and movie collection. All I really need are a few good books. These are the ones that can be taken anywhere. I always take Catullus, Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Keats, T.S Eliot, Pound, and Joyce. It be great if I only needed one.
Through the years and 32 moves later, I have had to part with many books. Some of them became musty after ten years of living in Key West and went to the used book store. My allergies stopped me from keeping them.
My old friend, Mary Ann, and I tried to decide, if we had too, which we could give up, books or movies.
We never came up with an answer.
It's such a relief to learn that I am not the only one whose book collection contains titles I haven't quite gotten around to yet. Often I'll look at the Folio Society's History of England series and think, 'I'll get to it...someday,' or imagine finally digging into 'The Magic Mountain' or 'Enigma.' But the thing is, they look great, feel great, and - admit it - smell great.
I collect books just as I collect movies. I could subscribe to Netflix and take books out of the library. But there's something comforting about surrounding yourself with creative works, knowing that at any moment you can take one out and enjoy it. Plus, as you mention, there is that sentimental attachment to specific books. If, for example, I lost my copy of 'Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,' I might die.
In a house with limited space, my wife and I have an understanding: If I acquire more books than our shelves and cases can accommodate, something's got to go. Since that 'if' is always a 'when,' I typically end up putting a few volumes in a cardboard box and storing it in the attic, until such time as we can afford building an addition for a proper library. She would prefer an in-law apartment. I suppose there may be room for negotiating.
You've heard it a million times, Roger, but I am an avid reader of your blog. I have enjoyed your movie reviews for years, and now that enjoyment has extended to your insightful, thought-provoking, humorous, emotional, and - hallelujah - liberal essays. In a world of mindless rantings and posturing, your postings are an oasis of rational thinking...of sanity and calm. Thanks.
Ebert: Of course you want the leather-bound limited edition:
http://www.foliosociety.com/book/HES/history-of-england-macaulay-limited
But if $1,396 is pricey, you can select your Macaulay from $2 up at Alibris.com.
Oh, and in looking for cheap books, I found this memoir:
http://tommywood.com/2003/11/reading-something-into-some-books-marboro-books-richard-farina-and-daniel-deronda.html
I read The Brothers Karamazov in university. When I went home for Thanksgiving weekend I forgot to pack my precious book and so purchased another at the bookstore in my hometown to keep up with the reading. I read the Zosima chapters over that weekend.
When I returned to school to resume the reading in my original book, I simply couldn't skip the chapters I had read in the other book because then, when I was done, I wouldn't be able to say I had read each word and each page in that physical book. So I read the Zosima chapters again for the sake of completeness before continuing on with the rest of the book.
My wife thinks I'm looney for it, but those chapters are still my favourite in all of literature. That second copy of The Brothers Karamazov, however, haunts me, as in that copy I've only read those chapters...
Hey, I think the name of that pub you mentioned is The Pig & Swizzle. That's a Rondebosch favorite. Googling "Pig and Whistle" yields a result in the Eastern Cape. It's not important, I just wanted to set the record straight on a haunt of mine while I was at UCT. Nowadays I get all my used books at Obz Books, down the road. Great article, on the whole!
Ebert: Definitely the Pig and Whistle. Gone, the last time I was in Cape Town. It was near the CNA, which may also be gone, and not far from the venue of the Rondebosch Chess Club, which was still going strong when I was last there.
Two South African readers on this thread so far.
Wasn't By Love Possessed published in 1957? You're thinking of the 1961 film, correct?
Ebert: That's it! I remember reading it late at night during high school, stirring restlessly with the desire to be by love possessed.
Does Chaz battle your books, when they inevitably creep out of your office, down the hall, and begin take over entire other rooms? Oh, and get with the program, and read the complete Tintin already!
Ebert: In French? Tonnerre de Brest!I have.
I am moved by your love for books, and I greatly enjoyed this entry ... but like young grad student Roger, I am content to have less rather than more. This entry tickles me because for my entire life I have found myself trying to find ways to keep a bare minimum (generally with the exception of my books!). In this last year, however, I have wanted to have as little as possible, to clear out the possessions, to cling to nothing but the essentials. (My husband - quite the opposite!) I suppose illness has driven me to that because I feel cluttered by STUFF. I suppose for others it might be the exact opposite - where illness leads to a desire to cling to as many things as possible. For me, however, I find enough comfort in the memories everlasting and feel it makes sense to let go of the objects. You say, yourself, that you would miss Chaz too much. That says it all. It is to those we most love that we are the most attached, not to those books (or other possessions), regardless of what fond memories those items might hold.
The science fiction writer Harlan Ellison once noted that, after taking an inventory of his library, he tallied more than 30,000 books. A friend of his asked him, "Have you READ all of those books?" Ellison replied,"Who wants a library full of books you've already read?" I think this pretty much captures the essence of bibliophilia...
Ebert: I was in his house once, with the circular staircase leading upward to more shelves.
http://site.xavier.edu/POLT/TYPEWRITERS/ellison.jpg
Those who do not have books cannot understand the need to have them and those of us who have books cannot understand how people can live without them.
I've always had books in my life and couldn't imagine not having them. Yes, I need the hardcover, paperback and reissued versions of Harpo Speaks, and my collection isn't complete without several copies of Act One.
My 15 year old son, who, thankfully, enjoys reading, commented the other day that one of his friends asked him from which public library branch he got his books, as he seemed to have a new and interesting book each week. My son smiled and told him he just walked downstairs in his house to his own personal library.
I'm glad to know I'm not alone. Growing up in, there was a book store in town that would sell quarter books right by my high school and I just couldn't pass it up. I would justify my buying of books by thinking that I was collecting art (even though I think I ended up buying some Dean Koontz books) and that if someone put in the effort to write a book, there had to be something of value in there. By 18, I had a book shelf of books that I had (and have) not gotten around to reading. I'm only 21 right now, but despite my best efforts the books on the book shelf continue to grow as I roam the used book stores of my new town. I'll set down and read them one day, but for now I'm content to look at the bookcase and think of the possibilities that await. Great blog.
I immediately thought of the Anthony Powell book when I saw the title of this post. I also believe books furnish a room. One of my favorite passages from Proust is when he wanders through a friend's library in Time Regained looking at books and remembering what was going on in his life when he first read them. The actual narrative in the books themselves become less important than the role they play in the narrative of M's life. I often feel that way looking through my shelves as well. There's "Island of the Day Before" read the first time I went to Cape Cod and "Dance to the Music of Time" from my trip to Prague and "Series of Unfortunate Events" read after 9/11 when reading seemed so pointless, etc, etc.
Goodness, first post, unproofed spellings and at all. I'm suddenly intrigued by the question of which movies a Roger Ebert considers worthy enough to keep in his house, ready for viewing whenever an itch strikes. DO you only save the movies you treasure? Do you naturally hoard all the screeners for schlock slasher films you'd never watch them on a dare? Do you "retire" a VHS movie once it comes out on DVD? No doubt you have many hundreds of LaserDiscs like me, but are there still some SelectaVision discs squirreled away (nope, I never had 'em)?
You don't mention a home theatre. You have mentioned not having the time for TV shows before, so I could imagine just a portable set in your office, because today's computer monitors no longer have the RCA inputs needed to play a VHS machine, where you review old films for your articles.
(I plugged my first computer, a Commodore 64, into a black & white RCA portable from the 70s that has now outlasted the signals it was designed to pick up. Then I got a color computer monitor which, in reverse, I watched TV on by feeding through my VCR.)
Unfortunately, having just moved into a new, smallish house with a 9-year old and a 19 month-old, all my many boxes of books will have to remain in storage for a few years until the youngest can curb her instincts to climb everything, pull every book off the shelf and see what sound the pages make when they tear off.
Oh, I'm probably not first post. There's probably a busload of comments awaiting approval before me already.
In the process of moving multiple times between 1994 and 2008, I unfortunately had to curtail my collection of books (and LP's). I still possess several of my first "real" books: a paperback of the Hobbit, a collection of poems, A Wrinkle in Time, a New Testament given me by a Sunday School teacher. I can still see in my mind's eye books I no longer possess, but fondly remember. Ball Four, Sandberg's Lincoln, Instant Replay (by Jerry Kramer), all of my Clifford Simak and Heinlein (what was I thinking?),among others. Among the sins of my ex-wife, giving away my Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes books, and VHS tapes regarding my beloved Houston Astros and the Astrodome.
I envy your collection, Roger. Enjoy & treasure them, and Chaz, even more so.
I find I prefer to give my books a second life. There's a wonderful Sober Club in St. Louis called the Lindell Club, where I can distribute my books among the other members, or simply leave them on the shelves.
Of course, the really good books, I keep.
I haven't read most of my books either, but their collective presence brings me joy. I love the colours of their spines, their various thicknesses, and their various title fonts, set next to one another on the black shelves.
If I look closer, I can marvel at their subject matter, and feel proud of myself for possessing them (and, at the very least, desiring to read them). I know there's some I'll never get to, especially in the Digital Age. However, if guests visit my home for the first time, and I step into the kitchen to fix us a drink, I'll come back to find them inspecting that shelf, to know me a little better. And they will know me.
There's only so much life, and if we're fortunate enough to live a long one, we'll still never read, watch or listen to every worthy thing. So perhaps an abundant bookshelf is our push-back against eternity? It's our way of saying that, while we may be mortal, we at least can envision an immortal version of ourselves. Not by knowing what that immortal self would know, but by knowing what that self would pursue, because time was not against it. We can appreciate, if not actually become, our Ideal Human.
Unfortunately, my relationship with books is not ideal.
Ebert: I see what you mean.
I just posted my "books" entry a couple days ago. I've often said that all a man needs is a cup of coffee, a Dylan album and some books. The only thing coloring my bare room is my bookshelf and dvd shelf. I often imagine my ideal set-up if I find success (ie, how my home would be set-up to accomodate my books and movies), and yours sounds very perfect.
Used book stores are like crack houses, and my room's littered with almost-read novels like empty syringes at a junkie's. I'm currently enwrapped in Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying."
As an Icelander who has yet to read the Sagas in their entirety I would appreciate it if you could let me know how they turn out.
Ebert:
Thorstein Egil's son received baptism when Christianity came to Iceland, and he had a church built at Borg. He was true to the faith, and a good man. He lived to be old, and died in his bed; he was buried at Borg by the church which he had built.
From Thorstein have come numerous descendants; many great men, many poets: they are of the stock of the Myra-men, as are all who sprang from Skallagrim. It long held good of that kin that the men were tall, and great warriors, some too were of prophetic sight. They were of two distinct types: for in that stock have been born the handsomest men in Iceland, such were Thorstein Egil's son, and Kjartan Olaf's son, sister's son of Thorstein, and Hall Gudmund's son, also Helga the fair, Thorstein's daughter (about whom Gunnlaug Worms-tongue and Skald-raven quarrelled). But the more part of the Myra-men were very ill-favoured.
Of the brothers, sons of Thorstein, Thorgeir was the strongest, Skuli was the tallest. He dwelt at Borg after the days of Thorstein his father. Skuli was long time out freebooting. He was forecastleman of earl Eric on the Iron Ram when king Olaf Tryggvason fell. Skuli was in seven battles, and was deemed a great warrior and a brave. He afterwards came out to Iceland, settled in the house at Borg, and dwelt there till old age; many have been his descendants. And so ends this story.
As an avid reader and a movie lover how do you feel about "the book was better" crowd? Do you attempt to compare the two when you see a movie based on a book? If so, do you find you typically like one better than the other or does it vary from case to case?
I have always assumed that, being a film critic, you preferred that medium. This blog is causing me to doubt.
Hi Roger,
It was delightful to read about your love affair with books, especially as so much of it is rooted in your time in South Africa. As I am also a South African (living in Joburg) - and studying English at Wits University - it was particularly amusing to read about your eating biltong and visiting the OK Bazaar.
I couldn't help but notice that you didn't make any mention of any South African books or authors that you have read. I'm sure there are many you've enjoyed? Also, if you're interested, there is a book called "Shirley, Goodness and Mercy" by author Chris van Wyk, which I found particularly endearing. It's a memoir about the aurthor's time spent growing up in the Coloured townships of Johannesburg. I'm certain you'd enjoy it, as almost all who have read it do.
Thanks,
Karl
Ebert: I had drinks in Grahamstown with Uys Krige, and dinner in Cape Town with Lady Joy Packer. I wrote my UCT thesis on the English literature of Southern Africa, from Olive Schreiner onward. Richard Rive, Roy Fuller, the great Nadine Gordimer...
I am much the same as you, Roger, with the exception of Kerouac's On The Road. It is the one book which I have owned perhaps six times over--- for every time I pick up a new copy, I read it, and then pass it on to someone who's never tasted its perfection. I don't want it back. I would never want to ask.
A lovely entry, Roger. I subscribe to your sentiments towards books and their necessity. I appreciate how you acknowledge that you have many, many books that you will never read yet nonetheless cannot discard. Why can't more people understand this concept, specifically my wife?! But I must ask if you’ve ever experienced an overwhelming feeling of saddened or even fear that you will never be able to read everything you want to? I know I cannot escape this feeling.
What you have here, Mr. Ebert, is a fine bit of testimony as to exactly why e-books may displace, but never replace, the real things--stained with chicken fat, soy sauce and other markers of a life lived as they may be.
Ebert: My books have survived experiences that would short out an electronic device. And they don't need batteries. And every precious stain tells its story. Even the occasional blood stain.
I collect books that I have not read too. I am currently making a list to order more from Amazon. When we moved into our house my husband and I never unpacked the books but I intend to, one of these days. The boxes are still in the basement. My office is almost straight but I haven't put any shelves up yet. His office is a wreck. He ordered three book cases from an office supply store. He built one. No books on it yet. He uncrated another. And still have one box untouched. Yeah, one of these days we will have book cases, and shelves, and they will be filled with books. And magazines, and cd's, and albums, and...
I'm a compulsive book collector. I often have to throw them out, because I have so many. I try to use the library as often as possible, and I don't feel enough people use it.
I read this and thought of one of my favorite lines from Frost: One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
We all know that simpler is better. I just wish I understood the human condition enough to understand why simple isn't enough.
Roger,
You once mentioned a Sherlock Holmes novel that made you smile every 30 seconds or so during reading. May I ask which?
And why not adjoining rooms, one for Chaz? Your home should be a museum for the rest of us already...
Mitch
Whenever my husband or I comment that we have too many books, the other will invariably add "Ah, but books do furnish a room."
You’re probably familiar with that blank look you get when you're passionately describing a book to someone, and they just don't get it. Anthony Powell summed it up nicely in one of the war-time books in A Dance to the Music of Time—The Valley of Bones, perhaps, or The Soldier's Art:
"Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are inconvertible assets to be passed on only to those who possess them already."
Ebert: Despairing of ever getting through that 12-volume work, I listened to the remarkable audiobook recordings by Simon Callow. They had the ability to lock Powell's character names into place as orbiting planets. There is some kind of ineffable genius in the name Kenneth Widmerpool. Now I am halfway through actually reading the handsome recent Folio edition.
I'm on it. I completely understand. I live in New York City and when I moved in with my wife, I had to get rid of some of my books simply to make room. My solution was to read or re-read every book and decide if they were worth reading again and if they weren't, they go to the thrift store. I have about 1,000 books. I figure I'll get through them all in fifty years or so.
Some of them I just can't bring myself to toss. I have a collection of Rilke's poems in German. It's a gorgeous book, about sixty years old. Beautiful condition. Can't read a word of German. Don't care. I'll phonetically sound it out. I have a fiftieth anniversary edition of The Hobbit. First printing. That, though, I've re-read about a hundred times.
Bookhounds are a rare breed. Either you get it or you don't. . .and if you don't, you're missing out. Or you do something ridiculous like buy a Kindle.
Ebert: I have nothing against Kindles. I just simply don't want one.
For those who feel the need to catalog their book collection, I suggest LibraryThing.com. Also a great site to browse old books and new. I'd love to see Roger Ebert's collection go up there.
"What do I really need that isn't here in this room?"
How about women?
Ebert: They came and departed, and offered venues of their own.
Hello Roger,
I understand exactly what you mean. On top of that, I don't know if you do that, but I usually keep the front row of my shelves for my favorite books (usually the ones all thorn from having carried it everywhere). Just so I can look at them. And since I usually buy my books from used bookstores, the smell of them is something quite unique. Just flipping through the pages gives you the scent of something eternal. And I never leave the house without a book. People sometimes laught at that habit, but who's laughing when they have to get on a 8 hours plane ride with nothing to read ? Even for a two minutes subway ride, I still need my book. I can't understand why anyone would want to stare ahead at the back of the seat in front or talk on their cellphone all the way through (even though they've been on the phone all day at work). I'm a book junkie and not afraid to come clean.
Keep it up Roger, those blogs are a great joy for me.
Yes, I would never throw away a book. It's one of my Jewish traits, respect for books.
This is the kind of post that I prefer. Most of your correspondents will probably be sane.
You would definitely have to lock the door and walk away because you can't move. I speak from experience. Movers have advised me that I should throw away my books instead of paying them to transport them to my new house because I could buy them new for less than the cost of moving. To hell with that.
You remind me of similar day in my life. Years ago at college I had a weekend that I consider the most pleasant solitary moment of my life. It was Easter Break but I had not gone home. I had the campus nearly to myself. I stopped a local store and got some cute bunny-shaped cupcakes and some cleaning supplies, nothing special. On the way home I stopped and picked a few jazz CDs and took them home. It was one of those rare moments where you stop and reflect and think that you are happy. I am not one to enjoy cleaning, but just being alone in the apartment, cleaning, and listening to good music, with some good food was enough. I was content. Of course, life dropped an anvil on my head shortly after that weekend, but I still remember it fondly.
A few months ago I was going through some old boxes and found the receipts from those small purchases, thanks to the fact that I never throw anything away. I was thrilled. It was an unintended time capsule.
As an aside, I have always wondered why you chose South Africa, given your politics. I understand that opposition to apartheid did not become fashionable until the '80s, and was probably not that much different than the environment in which you were raised, but why did you chose that location to study?
Great entry. I used to consider having this desire for amassing books a "problem". I read often but can never keep up to the pace of buying a new book in stores and ordering a few used online in a week. It's like my 'books to read' pile is increasing exponentially. But I'm glad I'm not the only one who devotes much of his practical space to bookshelves.
It does make moving apartments a hassle, though....
As I pack up my books for storage (more on the reason behind that, in two weeks, on my blog, for those who follow it among the readers here), I discover that I have the same problem as you. I have managed to get rid of a few books that I didn't like when younger, or books that my nieces may enjoy, or books that I know I will not miss, but these books are a small fraction of the many books that I own, most of which I cannot part with. I even shipped, to my house, all of the used books I bought in Japan when I left that country last year, despite the fact that buying newer versions of those books may have cost me less money.
Your blog post also reminds me of a quote by Charles Eliot, who writes in The Happy Life, "Books are the quietest and most constant of friends."
(The full quote is, "Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.")
I grew up in an apartment filled by books. There are at least twice as many bookshelves as any other piece of furniture. There are books everywhere, in the hallways, in the living room, in both my parents' offices, in my room, my sister's, my parents'. Even the kitchen has a few cooking books chucked on top of the fridge or hidden in a drawer or stuck between two pots. I remember once asking my dad if he'd read everything we had, although I don't remember his answer. Plans to redo my room were made and abandoned at least twice, because where would we put the bookshelves in the meantime?
As a kid, I would go to my friends' and be astounded by the lack of books. No bookshelves on every wall? No books lying on the living room table? There were books everywhere in my elementary school classroom. There were books everywhere back at home. How could you live without books? That made no sense to me. At the time, I didn't realize how lucky I was. There are a frightening number of kids who "don't like to read." Thanks to my parents, my sister and I were never in any danger on that front.
When I left Paris to go study abroad for a year in Chicago, I obviously had to take books with me. Every kind of book, from Alan Moore's Watchmen to Jon Stewart's America, from Neil Gaiman's American Gods to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. You never know what you'll need or want to re-read. That was only a tiny fraction of my personal library, a dozen books, perhaps a little more. Of course, I ended up not needing most of them. Then I bought more books there, some for my English courses, some not. While working at the library, I would take a break from reading Robinson Crusoe to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ("you're always reading something!" a friend of mine once said). When it came time to go back to Paris, I could barely close my suitcases. But leave books behind? Never.
As a kid, I had the same problem whenever there would be a garage sale in the neighborhood. My sister and I would be instructed to go through our things and figure out what we wanted to sell. I'd start with a large pile of books, then I'd go through it and divide it into two (theoretically) smaller piles: on the left, books I wanted to keep; on the right, books I felt okay parting with. The pile on the right never contained more than half a dozen books. Then my sister would go through it, and decide to keep half of those for herself. Parting with toys was easy. Parting with books was torture.
I loved books and read like crazy, even before I started 1st grade.
From listening to my parents old records, I loved the historical songs of Johnny Horton, especially "The Battle of New Orleans" (I grew up in Metairie, just down the road from the city of New Orleans) and "Sink the Bismarck". While wandering the school library as a first grader, I came across William L. Shirer's 'The Sinking of the Bismarck'. The sister who ran the library would not let me check it out, as it was too advanced for a 1st grader like me. I had to open the book and read some to her, to show that I could handle it. It was my first obsession with a book, and 35 years later I still have 3 copies.
It is difficult to explain my obsession to my wife, who is slowly coming to love reading, but nowhere as obsessed as I am. To placate her financial complaints about the number of books I bought, I have learned to read off my cell phone. It is a satisfactory, but not full-fulling solution. The words and stories are still there, but the comfort is not.
Great blog topic! I know your feeling about owning books you may never read, but know you should and someday might. I also have Churchill's History of the Second World War, and have added to it Blood, Sweat, and Tears, a collection of his pre-war speeches released in 1940 I think. (My favorite is when he responds to Mussolini's boast that he could sail up the English Channel and take Britain by invitating Il Duce to go ahead and try, Churchill would even move his ships aside to give him safe passage to the fight.)
I also have about 70 Library of America volumes, the best printing business in the business. If you have not joined them Sir I do suggest it. I read The Postman Always Rings Twice last night and felt like drifting west...
The most important thing I own is a copy of Graham's Ladies and Gentleman's Magazine, May of 1842 I believe. First printing of Poe's Mask Of The Red Death, he would only latere change it to Masque. My favorite story of his because it's last paragraph is the most convincing portrayal of finality in all of literature. Try and beat it.
Books are curious things, I was thinking that last week as my cat watched me read. To him I was staring at a small object for hours, and in truth it was only page after page of ink shapes that in and of themselves hold no entertainment value. That we as a species have mastered the concept of transferring thought into something so simple and compact is surely one of our grandest accomplishments.
Anywho, keep reading and so shall I. I am slightly A.D.D. I suppose, so reading takes me so damn long. But it is always worth it.
Ebert:
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
I've got, roughly speaking, two book collections: big and small. The big collection is whatever I think I'm going to hang onto, and the small collection consists of a few books that I simply end up going back to no matter what else changes. The former is things like Walter Winchell's biography. The latter is things like Barrows Dunham's "Man Against Myth" and good ol' Strunk & White (4th Ed.)
Many of the latter end up filed in a shelf immediately to the left of where I'm typing this. Every now and then when I'm stuck for a phrase I reach out, grab a book (any book), open to a page (any page), and see what happens.
I don't think a Kindle would survive 30 seconds in my hands. I'm the fellow who dropped his phone on the driveway, face-down, and then stepped on it and watched it skate into the street.
A cherished book becomes part of my soul.
A sickly child, I escaped the confines of my weak body with the intoxicating words I inhaled and absorbed from books of all subjects - fact and fiction. Hardy Boy mysteries and National Geographics, Ian Fleming, Ayn Rand, Shakespeare, Bradbury and Asimov. John W. Campbell, Honore W. Morrow, Robert Heinlein and Joseph Campbell. Psychology, philosophy, and fantasy. I borrowed medical journals from my doctor, textbooks from my teachers,and travel guides from the travel agency down the road.
Growing up one of my favorite places we lived at was a tiny apartment above an antique shop on Main Street in Patchogue, Long Island, NY. The public library was just around the corner, and Joe, our landlord and the Antique shops owner, would let my borrow the dusty old volumes that no one but me seem to be interested in.
We moved around a bit as I grew up, never a easy time for a child, but the most traumatic part of it, for me, was all the books I was forced to part with....I still think back from time to time about this great book and that great book... lost somewhere along the way..if I had a time machine I think my first adventure would be to go back to every curb side and friends house I had to leave my cherished volumes to rescue them and bring them back with me!
Hello Roger,
I was with you all the way except for the water biscuits. I can only imagine a chef somewhere, sometime, winning a bet by baking a cracker that tastes exactly like nothing.
Did you ever take any photos inside that Cape Town dorm? I recognize your state of mind -- "What do I really need that isn't here in this room?" -- from a time long ago when I felt myself on the cusp of clearing out the dross and actually living that way. And then... kids. Boom. I'll see your Shaw and raise you a complete Poe that's just as careworn, except it's in a box in the garage now.
Just tell me that somewhere in your office, amid the chaos, you've got your 20 volumes of Patrick O'Brian in a neat little row. I think of the whole thing as one big book anyhow. And that has resisted eviction from the living room.
But seriously, about the Carr's. You know they came into being because they wouldn't rot on long sea voyages, or in near-forgotten army barrels? You were punishing yourself and didn't even know it.
Thanks for evoking that rainy-day feeling on just such a morning.
Ebert: Not bad with jam.
This lovely blog post prompted me to go to the bookshelf and pull down the first book I that read all by myself. It was Ardra Soule Wavle's Rain and Shine. I was three and a half. Then, I went over to the coffee table and picked up my latest book The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. My mother was so proud of me when I read the first one; as religious as she was, she would be so disappointed to learn that I was reading the present one.
I bought a Kindle recently. It has its place. The best thing about it is if I see some author being interviewed on TV, and I decide I want to start reading his/her book RIGHT now, I can press a few buttons and BAM! I'm reading the book. So, in that aspect, it is convenient, much like the internet is a more conveneient way to search and find information, rather than, say, going to a library.
But books are so much more than just the words within. I'm certain that digital readers will someday replace books altogether, but that will just make our stacks and stacks of books all the more precious.
One thing that separates a bibliophile from a person who buys books is that each work is an extension of his/her personality. It doesn't matter that I haven't *finished* Wolfhardt Pannenberg's theological works; it's the fact that he is a hero. The fact that he is in my collection says something about me as an individual that cannot be expressed on any other level; as do my Czech-English dictionary, my 100-year-old book on sign language, a history of the community of Agness, Oregon; and, yes, a Chinese cookbook as well. It's not because the books are mine; it's because the books are *me*, that I can never part with a single bit of my book-horde.
And besides, they look classier than bumper-stickers, when guests come over.
Everyone in my family tells me to get rid of my books but I can not. All the careers and hobbies I've had and given up are represented. Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, 100's of Bible commentaries in English, German, Hebrew and Greek. At least 30 Bibles in Greek, Hebrew, various translations in English.
I have a nearly complete set of Tolkien (some heavily worn) including the expensive Shaping of Middle Earth Series. (I've gotten through most of it, but it's tedious even for the most dedicated.) I've never been into Classic Literature but I have lots of it just in case I change my mind. (Only in English or translated into English.)
Several rooms in my apartment are difficult to navigate with the stacks.
I have read or skimmed most of my collection (including my abridged Oxford Dictionary) but I still consider myself basically ignorant. The world is too big and life is too short.
Ebert: Everyone is basically ignorant. Some people are unnecessarily ignorant.
At least with movies, they have that more accessible "re-discovery" factor.
Someone needs to re-read Melville...
Ebert: Of course Moby Dick is a masterpiece, but Typhee is un-put-downable.
As a long time Ebertfest attendee, this blog post seems to possibly explain a key reason for your selection of the fantastic "The Stone Reader" early on in the festival's existence. That film continues to randomly pop up in my thoughts all these years later!
I blew all of my scholarship money sophomore year of college at Ole Miss on books, forcing me to eat oatmeal and one dollar Totino's frozen cheese pizzas that i'd buy in bulk for every meal. I ran out of shelf space immediately, stacking them in teetering columns all across my floor. The house was more than a hundred years old, shifty as hell, so every time someone slammed a door a stack of my books would topple. I didn't have a girlfriend (big surprise), so i always slept with a pile of hardbacks next to me in bed. Oxford, MS is a wonderful town for books, mostly because half the people you see walking around the square have written at least one, and chances are it's good. Terrific bookstore there, too. You should check it out sometime.
Nice to meet a kindred spirit. Carr's water biscuits are of course excellent with cheese. I still have my Hamlyn Shakespeare, I have more Simenon than you, and now that I am retired I can catch up with all the books I have meant to read, including the Powell series (thanks for the tip about the audiobooks , by the way).
I love your film criticism, and I think you are a very lucky man!
Oh, could I ever relate to this. My dining room currently has seven shopping bags and two boxes full of books - it'd be more, but I'm just housesitting and have to keep the rest of my books in storage elsewhere.
I'll buy them if they've been recommended, or if I've heard good things. I'll buy them if the back cover's interesting, or if the front cover's interesting, or if the flap copy is interesting. I'll buy them if I liked the paperback and want a hardcover, or if I liked the first edition and want the second (now with a new afterword!).
Sometimes I'll try and weed through them; I usually wind up keeping them all because they look too interesting to get rid of. Nine times out of nine, they are.
My favorite bookstore is the Lobster Lane Book Shop in Spruce Head, Maine. There are a hundred thousand books there, most of which sell for two-fifty or less. They have next to no web presence, and they're only open weekend afternoons in the summer. Nevertheless, they're a hugely popular destination in the region. I made the ninety minute drive three times this past summer and can't wait to do more next year.
Having all these great words around me, waiting only for me to pick them up, melds a sense of security with a sense of discovery like nothing else. I can say with total confidence that my life would be less rich if I hadn't found Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli at a ten-cents-a-pound booksale in Ellsworth, and whenever I hear of others who've made similar discoveries in similar fashion, I smile and think, Yes, they get it. They understand.
All to say, thanks for your expression of the gentle madness of bibliophilia.
Why am I not surprised that Harlan Ellison shares his office with The Cheshire Cat?
Any thoughts on books inscribed by the author, or those with doodled inscriptions by the illustrator? Oddly, I've never been one to write in my own books, but there's something I enjoy about having a book with a signature or words handwritten by their author, and so whenever possible I've gone to readings and signings in hopes of having a favorite book inscribed.
Tell us something about Roman Polanski.
Dorothy Parker, on the value of books in giving life to the lonely:
Song of One of the Girls
Here in my heart I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Stael;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Recamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell.
I'm of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
Thanks for the post! There's only one place in Portland, Maine (Shaw's on outer Washington) that I am aware of that actually stocks Hob Nobs, and the chocolate are my favorite!
Ebert: I have nothing against Kindles. I just simply don't want one.
I kind of do want one. The idea of having a small library with you without having to carry a small library with you is quite appealing. But until they figure out a way I can write down notes in the margin, I'm not sure how much use I'd get out of it.
And not to bring the conversation down, but I came across some stats about books the other day I found rather surprising. Some highlights/lowlights;
- 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
- 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
- 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
- Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.
http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html
Hi Roger, there was a "Movie Book" meme moving around the film blogs a couple months ago that I don't know if you saw. Bloggers were encouraged to write a post about the top 10 movie books that had encouraged them to get into writing about film. Your Video Companion series made it onto many lists, including my own.
The guy who started the meme eventually collected all the lists and made a master list here: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2009/07/movie-bookshelf.html
P.S. I have re-read Moby Dick.
I love reading fiction, and in particular I love reading great science fiction that has absolutely nothing at all to do with my bus commute to and from work, or my life at either end of it.
Every so often I make it a point to patronize the local library, as you are simply not permitted to keep those books lying around your house. And they don't cost me a nickel.
And then I get to a point where I've pretty much read all the books I want to read at my little library branch, and have to wait for the library to catch up with its collection.
But I also reach a point where I need to own my books again, even if I shelve or box them away when I'm done and never revisit them. Because there is something indefinably more comforting about curling up with a book that is your own.
Though I can't say that I actually "curl up" with a book on the bus, as I think it would look pretty creepy.
I love libraries, I do. Maybe it's just the thought that the person who borrowed the book before me read it in the bathroom.
(When I was a 19 year old backpacker in sauntering through Greece, a million years ago, I wrote in my journal that all I needed were the things in my bag, a good book, my frisbee, food to fill my belly and drink to wet my mouth. That same backpack is now buried somewhere in my crawlspace behind enough things to fill a second house.)
This is my favorite entry of yours yet. My books overflowed their shelves and any flat surfaces in my house some years ago and yet I continue to acquire more. Let me tell you what is simultaneously a great thing and a terrible thing for a bibliophile to do: work at a book store. Great if you have unlimited space and no need to buy anything else, terrible in all other ways.
And you're a man who appreciates Colette. My goodness. Didn't think I needed another reason to adore you from afar, but there it is.
Ebert: Any lover of fiction who doesn't love Colette isn't up to speed.
I've recently came back from a two-year stay in Freiburg, Germany, working on my Philosophy Thesis. I did bring with me all the music I could in my computer, but I didn't have Internet access at home for most of the time, and only there did I bought my first cell phone, my only connection to the outside world, except for the windows, maybe. Until then, I just thought to myself, there are no philosophical emergencies, and if there were, I doubt I'd be among the first to be called. No more than half a dozen books came along for the journey, and only one of then would be useful somehow – the other ones were old companions I'd read many times over, a small sample of Brazilian and Portuguese Literature: Fernando Pessoa, Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa. It would have been unfair to not let then see the Black Forest for themselves.
They grew in number over time, not enough to keep me satisfied or to take up the small studio apartment I occupied near the library, where, on occasion and with careful planing, was possible to cook for fifteen or more people. They were there, signaling how much time had passed, and fortunately not how little time there was left. The books eventually made their way back, so did I, and here I can actually afford more books than before, and generally a more confortable life, but I do miss being a foreigner, having a limited budget and getting away with doing so much with it, walking no more than a few blocks from home to feel like you've travelled or following the Danube from the Black Forest to Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and further away, so to visit friends.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/
(I'm sorry it's a webcomic about videogames, of all things, but it is at least appropriate, if not funny.)
Ah, this so much better than the "festering fringe".
I get rid of stuff, including books, constantly. I read about 3 books a month but make sure never to have more than 30 in the house at once. I simply prefer it to holding on to stuff.
I can relate to your thoughts on being near rain, however. What I miss most about cigarette smoking is not having one with coffee or a cocktail, but under an awning in a rainshower, preferably in a new city or a different part of town.
I have several video games and movies, and an increasing number of books, and I can pretty well remember where I bought them. Most of them are used, and my latest ditty was The Complete Sherlock Holmes from Doubleday, bought for $8 from an antiques store in Pinetops, N.C.
And I *completely* sympathize with not being able to let many of them go, or of finding them on shelves, on top of stuff or (like me) having them in the floor. Kindred spirits, all of us.
As was said earlier about a bibliophile not passing up a book store, or (morbidly) about an alcoholic unable to pass up a bar, to that I say, being a a self-professed "pawn shop rat," I find it very difficult to pass up a pawn shop. That's where I've gotten most of my video games and movies over the years.
Love the quote earlier from Harlan Ellison: "Who wants a library full of books you've already read?"
You are an inspiration. I am a current English student, living in my small apartment in Florida, constantly receiving abuse for my abundance of books. Most I have read, many I have not, some I might never get to. You have reaffirmed my lifestyle. Also, you are the only other person that I know of who owns an OED -- I too have my "compact" book with a wonderful magnifying glass that I bought for $200 from a nice old man in a used bookstore. Even my professors (wonderful though they are) try to convince me of the ease of using the dictionary online, through a subscription from the school. I, however, remain loyal to my 2004 copy that sits on my bar, magnifier resting on the cover. One of my treasured possessions. We are brothers in dictionary!
Ebert: When you use the magnifying glass to look up a word in the OED, by God, you've looked up a word.U
Amazon: The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.
http://www.amazon.com/Surgeon-Crowthorne-Madness-English-Dictionary/dp/0140271287/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_11
I was struck wit the Bibliophilia bug at a young age, always reading on my bed instead of playing sports like the other kids. By the time I finished grad school, my book collection was getting out-of-hand. Like many here, I cannot pass a used book store without going in and browsing. This often means I'm buying something. During my poorer days, I've had to choose between books and food. I often chose to feed my mind. Coupled with my bibliophilia is a similar impulse towards music of all forms, particularly jazz. Once you've caught the jazz bug, you're quick to discover its particular form of virulance. Unlike books where it is straight forward (I wanna read everything by this author), jazz is a complicated web (I wanna hear every note by this performer) of interconnection between players and sessions. It never ends. I'll never read, never see (because I have a mania for great films as well), never hear, never experience all there is to read, see, hear, and experience. It's not sad. It's wonderful. I wish such curiosity could be strong in everyone.
@ roger-
Which actor(The Show Off) did she(Ruth Gordon) love?...
Reply:Gregory Kelly... they met while co starring in Tarkington's hit Broadway play, Seventeen in 1918.
You would have recognized Kelly's character, Willie Baxter. (From Wikipedia) Reviewers have suggested that Willy Baxter is an older version of Penrod. Seventeen and Penrod are similar in structure...some character, situations, episodes from Penrod are recycled in Seventeen.
Booth Tarkington must have been quite a fine fellow. In a Memoir, a nephew, speaking for the family at the time of his death, "this is the first day I remember when I didn't think after I woke up-I wonder whether I'll get to see Uncle Booth today."
The Hardy Boys were my Penrod and Sam.
My brother is leaving in a couple of days to spend a week in Paris. I sent him a link to the documentary about Shakespeare & Co. I'm sure you realize that bibliophilia is a genetic affliction. BTW, my husband and I had a friend who walked into our house one time and said "It looks like a mad librarian lives here"
My name is Lee, and I'm a bookaholic, too. If I had to renounce all of my possessions, the books would be the last to go. I don't have as many as you, Roger; 30 years as a librarian taught me how to set aside lightly the books that ought to be hurled with great force. Lately, however, I've been spending more and more time in book shops (and thrift shops) and acquiring more and more books. Fortunately my wife, who is also a retired librarian, is tolerant and forgiving, and she seems to have been spared the gene for collecting, so I'm the only one with a hobby that threatens to overrun the house. Like you and Harlan Ellison, I own many books that I haven't read and probably never will read, although I try to avoid buying books that I'd refuse to read on principle. I can think of only one exception, the first edition of Atlas Shrugged that I found at the Goodwill outlet in Spanaway, Washington. Bad thinking and bad prose do indeed go hand in hand.
I organize my bookshelves based on which writers I can imagine having the most interesting conversations. I keep Freud away from the feminists, so they won't fight with each other (books are peaceful by nature), and I put Margaret Atwood with Tolkien and Vonnegut, because I think they have similar perspectives on different periods and places in history. I think I have read most of my books, but I gaze with longing on those I have yet to read every time I spend a few minutes idling in front of a shelf. Someday, I tell myself. Someday.
Luckily my husband and I are both bibliophiles and movie fiends. It makes things very easy.
Although it has meant we have about as many shelves devoted to books as to movies. And, it means we have to call dibs on who will read a new book when it's released. Books are also one of the few things that I've never had problems with buying, I sort of took the Erasmus quote by heart when I heard it as a child.
Another quote that I love about books comes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (show not movie).
Jenny Calendar: Honestly, what is it about them [computers] that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Jenny Calendar: Computers don't smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.
Books are one of the most important cultural objects we have. It binds the ethereal to a physical thing, which frankly is a bit magical.
The disdain expressed by technophiles for books is depressing. Apparently they are "old media". The internet is a great way to skim a subject and learn about writers and ideas you wouldnt have come across otherwise but if you want in depth knowledge of a subject you HAVE to read a lot of books on it.
The idea that all the information in the world is available online is a joke too. Take any semi-obscure writer or artist, start a webpage on him and it will immediately be the premier source of informaiton on that subject online even if it is poorly written.
Whenever I spend hours online I feel like I've had 3 big macs, after reading a good book I feel like I've run a marathon
Roger,
This beautiful entry will cause any good English major to tear up a bit. We all know how you feel. :)
My father has a beautiful, red leather bound copy of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings that I cherish above all else. When I was eight years old he sat me down on the couch and read a chapter from the book more or less each week until we had finished the whole thing. Of course I remember the wonderful prose and the excellent story, but above all I remember the smell of the book. Now, when I tell others about how much I love the smell of a good old book, they look at me as if I've got two heads. But I'm sure that you, and the others who have commented here can relate to my love of that wonderful old smell. The smell of libraries, of learning, of quiet afternoons flipping through worn out pages, oblivious to passing time and the world around you. Y'know, I doubt I would have ever developed the passion that I have for film, music, literature, art, etc. or even became an English major if my father had never sat me down with that beautiful copy of Lord of the Rings when I was eight...
This is me. I have about 500 books right now, but I've only read about half of them and I can't enter a bookstore without buying something. In addition to this I have about 500 CDs and several hundred VHS/DVDs and also a great many video games. Considering the small room I live in this is basically untenable. People assume that I must be fairly wealthy (by broke college student standards) to have so many things - but this is untrue. Rather, I have so much because I never throw anything away. I simply can't - I have sentimental attachments to all these things, and I treasure the opportunity to loan them to people. I love when I get to say, "Oh, you haven't read that? Here!" or "You've never seen Rashoman? You should come over and watch it." and so forth. And I am totally unattracted to digital media. e-books, mp3s, streaming films on my computer from Netflix, these things are convenient in a sense but something very pleasurable is missing from them. I'm not sure what it is exactly - I suppose it is just the absence of anything tactile that annoys me. Occasionally I get criticized by friends and so forth for having so much stuff - usually in a moralizing tone and often featuring the word "Materialist" or some equivalent. I don't know - maybe I am - but I love these things, holding them, feeling their texture, smelling them (books smell so good - both new and old ones) - so I say what's wrong with surrounding yourself with the things you love?
The happiest, sometimes most perilous, thing one can do with a beloved book is lend it out. I have a lost library in my head, books I couldn't resist sharing, and which are now gone. Then again: A few years ago I reunited with someone I hadn't seen in more than 20 years, and he returned a book I had lent him, a history of comics. And my long-gone copy of Tom Kromer's "Waiting for Nothing" was mourned enough to a past department head that she bought me a new copy.
And now my son is reading them. He's reading the copy of "A Clockwork Orange" I bought in the '70s--it advertises Kubrick's film version on the cover; and I noticed my woodcut-illustrated "Jane Eyre"--which my mother had bought at a church sale, with a companion copy of "Wuthering Heights"--on the stack with his school books--not to mention my rows of SF book club titles, picked over still--John Brunner, Ellison, Andre Norton, Sturgeon, still alive and kicking in new hands.
But there aren't enough books to own, and too many more to still lend out.
I'm fortunate enough to live in the same state as Elliott Bay Book Company, which is a smallish independent bookstore on the fringes of Pioneer Square in Seattle. This store could have inspired the line in Disney's Beauty and the Beast where Lumiere mentions "swamps" and "cascades" of books. The Book Company occupies about three floors of an old musty building, and it's a labyrinth of staircases, shelves, corners, and books, books, books...
Every so often I go there and try to find some small volume that would fit inside a college student's budget. Once I found a little treatise on Vermeer. They have a scholarly edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the collected works of T.S. Eliot (plus his uncollected works), and a lot of other things that nobody my age cares about any more. They have every genre under the sun, from astrology to novels to zoology. Every time I go I find a new corner I didn't know about.
If I had my way, my personal library would be something like that store.
What timing. I'm trying to reduce my own library in preparation for a move, and the best cook I've ever known has called me and says she wants all her cookbooks back. It'll be strange having Thompson's On Growth and Form, a dogeared paperback Epic of Gilgamesh, Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics (battered but still handsome), Fuse's Modular Origami, Gilpatric's Mr. Glencannon Ignores the War -- which, though disitegrating, somehow balances well against Masters' Bugles and a Tiger and The Road Past Mandalay -- a Dore-illustrated Inferno and the collected short stories of Greg Bear all within reach of my bed without McGee's On Food and Cooking. Still, I suppose it will save some confusion -- one of my biologist friends was quite surprised to learn that Peterson's Fish and Shellfish was a cookbook. And it's a hundred or so fewer books to lug to my new place. And I use that enormous tome, Chocolate, once a year, tops. *sigh*
Selling, giving back, giving away, throwing away, moving, it's quite a chore. But one finds interesting things. I've set aside Pagoo as a Christmas gift for some little girls who may like it, and I've lent out most of my Oliver Sacks. I just hope that I'll find one or more lost treasures, like Animal Storeys, or Herodotus' Histories with all the stuff I tucked into it, or my journal from Japan with the sketches from the Budokan...
I have a pet theory that you can determine if you are at heart a liberal or a conservative by reading one book. The book is "Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger. If, after reading this book you think Holden Caulfield is a spoiled brat who needs an attitude adjustment, you are at core a conservative. If you read this book and think Holden is a poor misunderstood waif and you feel sorry for him, then you are a liberal at heart. I considered myself a liberal when I first read the book as a teenager and I still thought he was a punk. Now that I am an older, wiser, conservative with libertarian tendencies (or is that a libertarian with conservative tendencies?) I can see that I was conservative then, even if I didn't know it.
Know what's really great? When you're in a good used bookstore (one with more than dog-eared paberback romance novels), and you find a veryn old book on a subject you're interested in...and it is bound in leather and feels great!
Have you ever seen McMurtry's collection, that he's selling in Archer City (Last Picture Show site)? It takes up five storefronts.
In addition to the used books which stack neatly up to my waist along the floor of the west wall of my bedroom, I am quickly acquiring a nice, disorganized pile of printed computer copier paper, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. So far, I gotten through The Death of Ivan Ilych, a couple of Schnitzler and Floyd Dell one-acts, re-read Notes From the Underground and Tartuffe and, as soon as I finish Lord Edgeware Dies for my book club, I'm starting in on Chekhov's The Black Monk. Each of these is in it's own special binder. I worry that, in a few years, my room may resemble John Doe's study in Se7en.
So, I'm doing a bit of math here.
The time you could be using to read all those books, you're using to read our comments and blogs.
Wait. Did I just describe you or me (or a few hundred other readers here).
Ebert: Ssssh!
Books are a joy to me and have been all my life. My shelves are filled to overflowing and every flat surface in my apartment is stacked with them.
I'm a Joycean and own several editions of Ulysses, including one I picked up for 20 bucks at an estate sale. It's a first edition, 1928, from Shakespeare and Co. Paris. My books about Ulysses and Joyce in general take up an entire bookcase.
As an opera fan and professionally-trained but amateur baritone, I have shelf containing stacks of the Ricordi and Schirmer librettos of operas I've sung in, interspersed with opera biographies and books about singing.
Between the Joyce and opera are thousands of other books, hard and paperback, filling my life. I never throw any of them away but I do have several on permanent loan to friends.
Few of my childhood friends shared my passion for reading, but thankfully I now have old pals with whom that love endures.
As I began the process of moving down here last year, boxes and boxes of books made the first trips. There is a rather moist smelling one in my car now from the basement of the old house. Two or three boxes still remain there. Odds and ends from library sales.
This house did not lack for books before I arrived. When my sister asked if I wanted to join her book club, I simply said that Dennis and I have a two member club already. Not quite true, but true enough. Not a collection, but an accumulation. Lots of trade paperbacks that will passed on as duplicates or not keepers.
Many good quality paperbacks from QPB. A fair number of hardbacks but not collector quality ones. There is a small Crime and Punishment volume that has been glaring at me a while. Its time is coming. I swear. Finally read War and Peace this spring.
Box arrived today from friendly online bookseller. Where the Wild Things Are - used the library copy when daughter was young or else she has it. Dead Witch Walking recommended by my much younger doctor brother in Tennessee. Two military books - The Sandbox and Welcome to Afghanistan: Send More Ammo.
I love libraries. I never quite kept current with publications. By the time I read Vonnegut's Jailbird it was a few years old. Prompted me to write to him. He wrote back!! This was 1982. As I was winding down my employment at NKU in the law library I took advantage of our resident archivist and she encapsulated the original for me. Typed on a manual typewriter with hot pink felt tip pen used for signature.
My Shakespeare is battered, loaned to several students over the years. Many of them studied with the same professor I had enjoyed and made good use of my marginal notes such as they were. I told them that non-majors shouldn't be expected to haul around a twenty pound volume forever. Students there could take a Shakespeare course for general education credit, also upper level. A twofer.
Inspired to visit Amazon to price check a mini version of the OED (to keep my Webster's 3rd Unabridged International company) when I came upon the review by "person." You must scroll down to his 1-star review here:
Spent the next ten minutes reading his reviews that begin here:
Even more hilarious are the comments by other users to his review of Finding Nemo. I was in the midst of reading the Brokeback Mountain review when I realized I had to pass this on to you and your readers.
Ebert: That reviewer is a comic genius!
Samsung PN50A450 50-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV
2.0 out of 5 stars DANGER!!!, March 14, 2009
I am not entirely satisfied with this product. The instructions are unclear (probably because they are written by the Japanese). It took me ages just to figure out how to operate it. Finally, I figured out that the plug needed to be inserted into the electrical outlet. It didn't say that anywhere in the directions!
When I turned it on, i discovered that it only gets one channel. Every time I plug it in, I simply get a loud "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF" sound and a bunch of black and white stuff that moves quickly around the screen. My friend calls this phenomenon "white noise" however, I can see black in there too. It is my estimation that this is probably some show about a swarm of files.
I also have reason to believe that this device emits harmful radiation. The label calls it a "Plasma" T.V. As everyone knows, Plasma is a state of matter in which gas becomes ionized. This is similar to the state that creates nuclear fusion within stars. Because of this plasma, this device most likely emits harmful gamma radiation! I looked closely at the T.V. and discovered that it says "made in china". This plasma added by the Chinese is likely a communist plot to render the people of the United States sterile.
One plus is that it doesn't use the vacuum tubes that my old T.V. has. It's also much larger and thinner.
In the end, I recommend this product to people that enjoy watching flies, and enjoy self sterilization.
Books! I could never part with my collection of books, partly because they accumulated through much toil and cost on my part and chart my growth as a Lit major through undergrad and grad schools. As another poster noted, I enjoy them better now that reading them is not compulsory.
Still, whenever I open my copy of Midnight's Children, I see mustard stains and remember that pretzels made for a perfect in-between-classes snack and, because pretzels are exceedingly portable, they encouraged outdoor reading (always good for people like me who never get out often enough). My copy of Shame, just like my own complete works of Shakespeare, is still flagged with stickies and scribblings that I can barely decipher. Whenever I read Disgrace, I recall heated debates with my mentor (a South African) about cultural guilt that still occupies my thinking from time to time. One page of Jude the Obscure is punctuated with O- M- G-! down the margin. However much Hardy's novels moved me, sometimes the misery of his later offerings was even more than an angsty undergrad could hope to endure. All the paperbacks, all the hardbacks, all the Norton Critical editions, all the Dover thrift editions, all the postructural and posthuman philosophical texts and tomes on cultural criticism that complicate the reading. For over ten years, these books were the largest portion of my life.
I cried when, on unpacking boxes from storage in our new house, my hand-me-down collection of '60s and '70s hardback sci-fi had finally succumbed to mold. The family friend who'd given them to me had passed on, and this collection told me more than I ever thought I could have known of him. And like him, passed now into dust.
I have eight bookcases in all, about half of them double-stacked: so many feelings I've never had occasion to feel in day-to-day life (such despair, mania, hubris, etc.), so many places I've never seen, so many political situations I've never had to survive with grace and decency intact, so many recipes I've never tried my hand at. These books complete me where they do not explain me to myself.
That you have a similar love for books makes me warm to you as to an old friend. That you also have the pack-rat gene convinces me that you are a kindred spirit. I need the Looney Tunes character glasses from Pepsi that I used when I was four years old (what's left of them are in the cabinet, ready for use). I need the smilie face piggy bank I received on my fifth Christmas. It looms atop one of my bookcases in the office instead of a raven statue, globe, or similar. Likewise, the plaster gargoyle and zodiac blanket I got at my first Renaissance fair are at home there. I've kept every book and set of die that I've ever used for tabletop RPGing, regardless that I haven't played in over 10 years. I just need them. Posters, mugs, pens, other paraphernalia, they are cluttered around my office, too, threatening to wash me away in their tide until I find a better way to organize them. Like the protagonist of The Waste Land, am I shoring these fragments against my ruins? Perhaps all these signs of who I am and where I've been do keep me from coming apart at the seams a little. ;D It's inexplicable, or to paraphrase your apt words once more, "I just need them."
"My only regret is that I will never have the time to read all the books I want to read."
I don't think I'm really out of control with my books. I mean, people come over and look around and say "Man, you must read a lot", but I just think it's normal. Four floor to ceiling bookshelves in a one bedroom apartment double-stacked is normal, isn't it? And it's totally normal to wedge more into the DVD shelves. And have a big pile on the desk. And on both living room end tables. And inside the end tables. And on the bedroom bedside tables. Oh, and that drawer of the bedside table where I store all the impulse buys I am really going to get too, as soon as I finish re-re-reading The Last Samauri (no relation to Tom Cruise.) Totally normal.
I mean, every woman must contemplate a new purse selection not in terms of style or cost, but on whether a large size paperback,at least, can fit into it. Right? And take out half the clothes she's packed for a vacation to make sure the seven books that are making the trip with her don't cause heavy baggage fees. Every woman must be determined to buy at least a couple new sweaters so she doesn't look a complete ragamuffin for the sixth year in a row, but hey! Diane Ackerman and Kate McConnel both have new hardbacks out! A true bibliophile waits not for the paperback release.
Beside the bed are my inherited Bible and a row of humor books, since you should always attempt sleep with a peaceful mind and a smile. Three Men In A Boat always does the trick. And you don't have to be a believer to appreciate the writing of the King James Bible (I am, but don't feel it's required.) If a person cannot feel tingly at reading Song Of Solomon, to quote Anne Lamott, someone has gotten inside your brain and really fucked you up.
I understand your dread at book recommendations, since nothing presses mortality more than hearing of yet another book, one that sounds so glorious, funny, wrenching, or just plain good--all flooding upon the head in a marvelous, skull-bruising downpour. Impossible to catch them all. But let me fit one more bookcase in here, and I'll try.
dear Mr. Ebert,
thank you, thank you for your fantastic blog entry about books! i've had to defend my large book collection many times and you've explained very eloquently why it is we "need" all our books, even though we (probably) will never read them all.
slightly off subject, i too collect movie/film books and for years i've had your 1986 movie/video guide on my want list. it will complete my collection but i'm beginning to wonder if it even exists!
p.s. one of my most treasured books: the 1993 edition of your movie guide which you graciously signed and inscribed for me when i screwed up my courage to approach you at the Telluride Film Festival that year. thanks again :)
I prefer the style and construction of older books. 1950's 60's and 70's. The style and quality are better, the typeface and font are more interesting and they seem to be better constructed. Used book stores have that certain style unencumbered by the stale, corporate feeling of your Borders and Barnes and Noble. Walk into a used book store and you are immediately effected by the smell, interesting music and the owner's personal idiosyncracies. Unfortunately, they just closed down the 250,000 volume Wahrenbrocks in San Diego. However, we still have 3 or 4 great used book stores here including DG Wills, Adams Ave Books, Maxwell's House of Books.
The only new book store that to me has the feel of a used book store is City Lights in San Francisco. Located at the nexus of Chinatown and North Beach, this icon is a must visit for the bibliophile. It has creaky wooden floors, a great selection of books, (they also have their own publishing company), and wild jazz music piped throughout the store. You walk out of here with a few books under your arm on a cold, foggy San Francisco night, look out at Coit Tower and you are in literary heaven. Of course the store is a little on the anarchist side, but I find that interesting.
As far as used book stores, The Strand in New York City is incredible. They have a selection of used and new books side by side and the size of the place, upstairs and downstairs is fantastic. You could literally spend hours here. In Chicago I have only been to Printers Row and the Abe Lincoln book shop. I loved them both but they were definitely on the pricey side. How about other used book stores in Chicago? Powells, etc... Can anybody recommend others in Chicago or around the nation?
Ebert: New books , especially novels, often seem just too damn unnecessarily big.
On 57th St in Chicago's Hyde Park, you'll find the romantic, atmospheric O'Gara and Wilson. Here's their blog:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/05546003060030619631
Also a second Powell's, and the invaluable
http://semcoop.booksense.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp
I was lucky enough to grow up in a household with parents who loved and cherished books. My brother and I were never bored or could say we had nothing to do when we had a home full of books.
Every time we do a spring cleaning we come across our massive sets of bookshelves and cannot bring ourselves to get rid of any books.
Logically, yes, we haven't read any of these books for many years and they are collecting dust. But like you say, you can't just throw them out either. We end up looking at the covers and are reminded of when we first read them and end up putting them right back on the shelf.
It's a shame how books in the house are perceived now in today's society. It seems everything about the modern home has to be asthetically pleasing as seen in the latest home decor magazine.
Bookshelves are seen as an eyesoar as the spines are not colour co-ordinated and the different sizes of books lined up together make a room appear jumbled, unorganized and disrupt the "flow" of a room. A certain no-no by the standard of the design "experts" that flood our TVs, magazines and newspapers on a daily basis.
We need books to enrich our lives. They are symbolic of learning, growing & gaining knowledge.
In the age of so many frivulous distractions, encouraging reading will always be a must in our household.
Every bookshelf I've ever owned is basically a challenge: How quickly can I fill them up? Naturally, I can't pretend to have read every book I've owned, but used bookstores have a particular siren call. I can't tell you how many emergency trips I've made to Detroit to bail out my small room in Cincinnati - so many books and not enough room.
I'm the same way with DVDs, worse with things from my childhood. Out in the garage are buckets of legos, wrestling action figures, and Hot Wheels cars. In the basement are the boxes of comic books I collected when I worked at a shop. The books I own that aren't in my dorm room are strewn everywhere. Thankfully, my mom understands the compulsion. I don't know how she puts up with me.
If I were to pare down my existence here in Cincinnati to the bare essentials, I'd be stuck with a chair, a desk, my fountain pen, a rice cooker, a fridge, my netbook, my speakers, books, music, and my USB turntable. And clothes, I guess, as long as I didn't have to sacrifice space I'd prefer to use on my record crates. Luckily enough, no matter where I move post-college, it'll be bigger than this room. The library style bookshelves my aunt has been saving for me can finally be one with the old Romanian number in my dorm room, and I won't be forced to choose between Nine Stories and The Catcher in the Rye.
This leads right in to my favorite dilemma. What books to take with me on a trip. I have to travel from central Ohio to SE Pennsylvania for 3 whole days to attend a wedding and I have to have enough reading material to satisfy all possible whims. So far I'm leaning toward DON QUIXOTE (my novel), either Spenser or Christina Rossetti (gotta have some poetry), a book of ghost or horror stories (an October tradition), something on the history of auto-racing (a 3 year obsession), maybe a book of folklore or fairy-tales, and probably a book of early newspaper comics (Terry and the Pirates or Popeye or maybe Dick Tracy - all great stuff by the way). One never knows if he'll have some downtime on a trip.
Serdar: "I'm the fellow who dropped his phone on the driveway, face-down, and then stepped on it and watched it skate into the street."
You have lived the dream.
Here's one for you Roger, which of your books tells the greatest story not its own?
Ebert: I know what you mean by that, but, hmmm...
How I got my first copy of the "Big Book" of AA.
I think going to the public library is almost better than going to the bookstore. I love the worn and handled books and the smell of the old paper has an allure. Every book there has a history based on the check out date stamped in faded ink. The library is a place for someone who truly values reading. Today's bookstores have become like huge superstores with only the most current books and as much empathysis on other media and coffee than on the books.
Reading Frank McDevitt's post about The Lord of the Rings (October 6, 11:38 AM) made me want to share my own Lord of the Rings story:
Back in 1989 or 1990, my dad purchased a computer game called War in Middle Earth, based on The Lord of the Rings novels. In order to beat the game, I decided to start reading my parents' old paperback copies of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King (this would have been around the time I was entering sixth grade). I still remember what the book covers looked like (and that the books were cheap--$1.75 each, I believe). Well, I never beat the game, for though I started taking notes on The Fellowship of the Ring to do just that, I stopped taking notes some point after the hobbits arrive in Rivendell, but continued reading.
Because I was in school, it took me a long time to finish The Fellowship of the Ring (about a year), but once the summer came, I made quick work of The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The climax of The Return of the King and the episode in Shelob's lair in The Two Towers (when Sam stabs Shelob with Sting) stirred in me the most powerful emotions I have ever experienced while reading a book. In fact, I was on an emotional high for several hours after reading the climax, lasting through my reading of the rest of the book and the appendices.
The Lord of the Rings was the first book (or series of books) to stir such emotions in me, and--in many ways--other great experiences with books have never equaled it. I now have my own hardcover copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but when I read it, will it smell musty, like my parents' books did? Will the pages be slightly browned by age, as they were? Will it give me the sense that I am reading something very old and very special, as it did when I first picked up my parents' copies and began flipping through their pages? Perhaps not, for my memories of my parents' volumes involve everything from the covers, to how they felt in my hand, to how they smelled.
As for Moby Dick, Mr. Ebert, that is the only book I have attempted to read that I had to put down before I finished it. This was due to sheer boredom. Having said that, I am not giving up. I am sure that someday, I shall read the entire thing. I almost stopped reading The Red and the Black, too, but I was rewarded for my diligence with an ending that was superior to most parts of the book.
Finally, I will worry about Finnegan's Wake after I get through Ulysses, which (like Moby Dick) I am putting off until some unknown point in the future, and sometime after I reread Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
By Ryan Crowe on October 6, 2009 10:23 AM
Tell us something about Roman Polanski
Haven't you heard enough from everyone else? Check out my blog if you want to hear the bottom line on the whole thing.
Thank you for this post. It’s comforting to see that I’m not the only one who pack-rats books like some sort of demented squirrel. Have to say though, your storage techniques sound kind of disorganized and not at all in accordance with the Dewey Decimal System. Here’s betting your local library keeps a mug-shot of you on their wall of shame.
So how do you find books when they’re all piled higgledy-piggledy like that? At the very least, I’d have the shakes if the ones I’ve already finished weren’t segregated from those that were on the to-do list. How do you sleep at night? I’m guessing on a uncatalogued, shambolic heap of pulp fiction, cookbooks and the Beatrix Potter miniature collection series. It’s uncivilized.
Confession…My ultimate guilty pleasure is going to a charity used books sale with its endless tables filled with thousands of books marked at ridiculously low prices. I bring my own box. It’s joyful. It’s Shangri-la. It’s a Vegas jackpot without the tacky theme hotels and Cirque de Soleil.
Just wondering whether you have tried to read any book of the discworld series written by Terry Pratchett? Would love to get your opinion on those. Especially when I hear Hollywood is trying to turn a couple of those in films...
I am finally inching forward through Faust having stumbled across a bilingual pocket Bantam edition for $1.00 at the massive used book bazaar in the precincts of our Panjab University. To quote some that I underlined:
In parchment you seek the spring
Whose draught will slake your thirst forever?
You must draw it from your inward soul
Or else you'll ne'er be satisfied!
and more strongly
Go paste your words together
A gruel of morsels left by others!
Work up a feeble flame
From your puny pile of ashes!
I personally feel the urge to purge myself of the ever amassing accretions of paper objects( when and how do they reproduce?).
We have what you would call a Waste Paper Man who goes around the neighbourhoods on his bicycle announcing himself in a powerful baritone and you can unload all your old newspapers,magazines and unwanted books on him.
Recently I carried out a massive operation and my bookshelves are real lean and mean now and I hope to make them and shrink, shrink...
One of the blessings of the net is that it don't need no vacuum cleaning...
My wife and I have accumulated books for many years now by any means necessary: bookstores, used bookstores, library inventory sales, garages sales, and so on. We had one ramshackle bookcase that they went in, and the rest would go in boxes in the spare room. About a year ago, I went to IKEA and filled two walls of the spare room with floor to ceiling bookcases. The spare room, once a garbage dump, is now a library and is easily the most comfortable room in the house. My favorite moments are spent sitting in this room and reading books under the soft incandescent glow of a single 60 watt bulb. Sometimes it's the little things that make life worth living.
I'm currently reading David Mura's Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (and by "currently," I mean I just put the book down to write this). In it, he mentions Yeats's "Easter, 1916," which brought back memories of reading it for the first time.
My first impulse was to get up and grab my collection of Yeats's poems from the shelf to read "Easter" again. Then I realized I'm at a coffee shop, and that my book of Yeats's poetry is on a different continent. I guess I could look it up online, but it just wouldn't be the same.
I have an enormous collection of books, and I think my wife despairs at its breadth and depth sometimes. She loves books, but doesn't have the collect-and-keep mindworm.
Each book I buy is a purchase not just of the book itself, but of the idea that I will have the time to read it at some point. Were that true, given the number of books I've bought, the number I'm likely to buy over the rest of my life, and my average reading speed, I think I would be effectively immortal at this point.
Plus, none of us ever want to be in the position of the poor bookshop owner in the classic Monty Python skit!
The longer you wear it, the more it feels like chamois! I've been wearing it a long, long time. I can't say it feels like chamois, never having worn chamois. But I want to work on it some more.
I also need this tea mug from Keats House in Hampstead, even though its handle is broken off. I need it to hold these ball-point pens I had printed with the words, No good movie is too long. No bad movie is short enough. They were 100 for $39, I think. The ink has all dried up over the years, but I still need need them in order to provide a purpose for the mug.
This is like the noodle master in Tampopo, who wants to respect the noodles and even say "see you" to the pork before eating it.
You want to drag a beloved shirt to eternity. And ofcourse, the tea mug is the only tea mug which is the tea mug you bought in Keats houser.
Losing things is so heart wrenching, be it an eraser....why should anything become thin air? Do stones and pens and tea mugs have life?
After all animate matter is aggregated from inanimate!
Your words ring so true. My wife and I are just as well suckers for used books. I carry a notebook with dozens of books that have been recommended to me in case I come across one in a used bookstore.
And who can get rid of a book once they've obtained it? Even crappy highschool and college textbooks seem to find their way onto shelves or (sadly, since we are in a small rental house) into boxes, never intending to leave our permanent collection.
Over my lunch break today I walked a few blocks to the downtown Library here (and returned in the pouring rain) to find a collection of Raymond Carver's short stories, but it just isn't the same to obtain a book temporarily.
Glad to see that there are book lovers the world over who, even though their books are worth a great deal in dollar value, measure the true worth of their collection by the memories and potential of enjoyment that each book holds.
I have two bookshelves in my room booth of them are six feet tall, about; taller than I am. The shelves are carefully ordered. I feel as though what I put at the top of the bookshelf defines my personality. Right now at the top of the shelf on the left are Mutiny on the Bounty, a selection from The Jesuit Relations and the screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde.
The books that I'm currently reading aren't actually shelved, I carry them around with me all day and at night I put them just where I can see them in the morning. Right now I'm reading a math book called How to Solve It, by George Polya and have been sleeping in because of the sight of it.
My parents regard my reading and writing mostly as a fire hazard. They never really bothered to set positive standards anyhow, it's always been they're style to just let me know when I've done something wrong. You could say they were leaving me silence between notes. Giving myself aims is something I learned from books. And what aims to have. And how to pursue them.
I haven't read a novel in years, instead there's been philosophy, science, and very old plays. People who can make books their tutors gain awesome independence. Maybe there's nothing more american than having books at home. I don't know, I;m Canadian. My experience is that you can't assume others will value the books you cherish. The volume of literature in this world, in English alone, is vast. There is a danger of being overwhelmed. So I put off reading novels for the moment and instead I spend time internalizing facts about scientific marvels, and reading from wisdom books that help me keep my feet on the ground.
I think the internet is good for the world of books. Online catalogues have made it easier than ever to discover books whose contents we can be proud to stand behind. The internet even offers personal cataloguing applications which link to social networking sites such as this one at: http://livingsocial.com. Seeing a list what someone has read tells you a lot about where they are in life, I'd say. I take care to update my page and rate what I've read.
My favorite books as of this moment are Mirrors in the Brain by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia, Frances Anderson (Translator), Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach by Paul Joseph Gulino, and Antigone by Sophocles.
I have a very small collection of books that I call my "library." It consists largely of books on film and criticism, but there are a few novels that I stick in for regular perusing/reading. But one keeps finding its way into the collection: Maggie Cassidy by Kerouac. It's a Penguin paperback that I bought at a used bookstore in downtown St. Louis. Later in the evening I met some friends at a small Italian restaurant on the Hill and went home and couldn't put the book down. Every book tells a story and with most books, especially the really good ones, they spark a memory.
"What do I really need that isn't here in this room?"
I would add to your list of things that are required only one: a beautiful and intelligent woman.
There are few things as pleasurable as a day spent reading indoors (and I agree, out of the rain, so you have both the sound of the rain and no reason to leave the room) in the company of a woman (I add "beautiful", but I need not, for what woman who reads isn't?) similarly engaged. Even the quietest and most personal of pleasures is made better by the company of a good woman. Highlights of the day should include:
1. Long stretches of silence
2. Occasional glances up (helps relieve eyestrain) and exchanges of smiles (good for the heart)
3. A shared cup of tea with unforced conversation about what is being read (or not)
4. Long periods of time in which you both read while your feet overlap
5. Plans to go out for a bite to eat (or dare I suggest it, a movie) in the evening
There is one other item on the agenda, of course. No man needs to be told what it is, and no gentleman would enumerate it. It adds to the enjoyment of the reading, and the reading reciprocates.
Greetings Roger and fellow readers!
This is my favorite of all your essays. It is also timely. Recently, I just finished a highly-detailed cataloging of all 6741 books, academic journal articles, and films in my personal library. This activity took over 3300 hours and covered three years.
Like you I am thrilled at having books that cover every conceivable subject. Each book has a story of how it was acquired. There are personal inscriptions by previous (and some related) owners that have great spirit and reasonance.
I've decided that any potential life partner of mine must love to read! Thank you so very much for a highly life-affirming essay.
Chris Alders
Nova Scotia, Canada
In my youth, I read books faster than I could afford to buy them. Nowadays, DVDs and the Internet have stolen much of my time and attention, and I don't read books as quickly as I acquire them. This means I'll eventually die with a lot of unread books in my possession. If there's a Heaven it'll have very comfortable armchairs. (But I wouldn't bet on it.)
Is "Ellison Wonderland" as interesting as they say...?
I've always been slightly puzzled why so many people remember "Lord of the Rings" trilogy so fondly.
There are certain books that "everybody reads."
One of them was "The Godfather."
"Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth," Mario Puzo wrote, "in my own mind I heard the voice of my mother. I heard her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself, qualities not valued in women at the time. The Don's courage and loyalty came from her; his humanity came from her."
Q: How did you come to write The Godfather?
Puzo: I wrote it to make money. One editor (at Atheneum) wistfully remarked that if "Mamma Lucia: The Fortunate Pilgrim" had only had a little more of that Mafia stuff in it maybe the book would have made money. I was forty-five years old and I owed $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks and assorted bookmakers and shylocks. It was really time to grow up and sell out as Lenny Bruce once advised. So I told my editors OK, I’ll write a book about the Mafia.
Q: But then wasn’t it rejected?
Puzo: I wrote a ten-page outline. They showed me the door again. There is no way to explain the terrible feeling of rejection, the damage.
(You want names? Hiram Haydn told his partners it was "junk.")
Q: So how did it finally get published?
Puzo: Nobody would take me. Months went by. One day a writer friend dropped into my magazine office....
(Note: Puzo worked as a writer/editor for men's magazines, with titles like Male, True Action, and Swank. He wrote World War II adventure features under the pseudonym Mario Cleri for True Action. He also published book reviews, stories, and articles in such journals as Redbook, Holiday, Book World, and the New York Times. In 1965 Fortunate Pilgrim was published by Atheneum. After an expensive medical emergency - a gallbladder attack - Puzo decided to write a book based on Mafia anecdotes he'd heard while working at the magazines, and started to collect material on the East Coast branches of the Cosa Nostra.)
Puzo:... As a natural courtesy I gave him a copy of The Fortunate Pilgrim. A week later he came back. He thought I was a great writer. I bought him a magnificent lunch. During lunch I told him some funny stories about the Mafia and showed him my ten-page outline. He was enthusiastic. He arranged a meeting for me with the editors of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. The editors just sat around for an hour listening to my Mafia stories and said go ahead. They also gave me a $5000 advance and I was on my way.
Q: Did you have any first-hand knowledge about the Mafia?
Puzo: I’m ashamed to admit that I wrote The Godfather entirely from research. I never met a real honest-to-god gangster.
Here's another version of the story, from Robert Evans:
In the spring of 1968, a largely unknown writer named Mario Puzo walked into the office of Robert Evans, the head of production at Paramount Pictures.
Puzo had a big cigar and a belly to match, and Evans had consented to take a meeting with this nobody from New York only as a favor to a friend.
Under the writer’s arm was a rumpled envelope containing 50 or 60 pages of typescript, which he desperately needed to use as collateral for cash.
“In trouble?,” Evans asked.
And how. (The title of his treatment was "Mafia".) Though the word had been in use in its current meaning in Italy since the 19th century, it gained recognition in America in a 1951 report by the Kefauver Committee, a congressional group headed by Democratic senator Estes Kefauver, of Tennessee, created to investigate organized crime. The good news, Puzo claimed, was that the word had never before been used in a book or film title.
“I’ll give you ten G’s for it as an option against $75,000 if it becomes a book,” Evans remembers telling the writer, more out of pity than excitement. “And he looked at me and said, ‘Could you make it fifteen?’ And I said, ‘How about twelve-five?’”
Without even glancing at the pages, Evans sent them to Paramount’s business department, along with a pay order, and never expected to see Puzo, much less his cockamamy novel, again. A few months later, when Puzo called and asked, “Would I be in breach of contract if I change the name of the book?,” Evans almost laughed out loud. “I had forgotten he was even writing one.” Puzo said, “I want to call it The Godfather.”
Puzo finished writing in July of 1968 and used the final installment of his advance to take his wife and children to Europe. He returned home in debt once more, only to learn that bidding for paperback rights to The Godfather had reached $375,000 and was still climbing.
The winning offer, $410,000, was a record at the time. (I think Atheneum, who published the hardcover, kept half.)
After the novel topped the New York Times bestseller list, Burt Lancaster offered Paramount a million dollars for the movie rights, planning to play Don Corleone himself. Afraid that the Paramount board would take Lancaster's offer, Evans rushed the movie into production.
Let me finish with a comment about Steven Spielberg, who once said, "The word I love to hear most is the word Yes." Because, to get started, someone has to say the word "Yes." Whether you're talking about books or movies.
As kids, we were always big readers. Two of my sisters have continued, collecting pretty much as you have described. I was more episodic. Each year I'd buy as much of an author as possible and read as much as possible. I enjoyed the immersion. Then, as the years went on, I'd have to buy the new titles of those authors. Some didn't get read, but I think that's how I ensure my future.
I was about halfway through Finnegan's Wake when I put it down. Now I've lost my place. I keep thinking that I've read this part before but I'm not sure if that's true or not.
My wife does not understand books. I gave in a couple times, once I lost all of Elmore Leonard in a garage sale. I am somewhat consoled that someone else can enjoy them, but it still doesn't feel quite the same way. More surprising was that Hemingway didn't sell.
To: Shane
YOU sir are one of the reasons I seldom get anything useful done. (Well, and these blog chapters with their ever-growing, endlessly thought-provoking comment tails.)
I innocently clicked on your link to the Amazon reviewer person which led me to Amazon's honest-to-gosh serious page for Uranium Ore. Forget the uranium, nearly every segment and link on this page is solid gold.
...wife just walked in and asked if I didn't have anything better to do. What kind of question is that?
Ebert: Readers, this will strike you as decidedly odd, but I have decided to try out twittering.
http://twitter.com/ebertchicago
An experiment, which may produce a blog entry.
Many people don't understand me because I reread most books. I don't understand them because they don't.
Thanks for such a marvelous essay. Books will never die.
Beautiful blog post as always, Roger, but I was taken aback by your use of the word occult to describe the I Ching. It's as natural as any philosophy book I've ever read (okay I've read two, and one of them was a textbook). Doesn't the occult have to do with the paranormal?
Ebert: of, involving, or relating to supernatural, mystical, or magical powers or phenomena
The theory that you can obtain actual guidance from it is magical, no? Don't get em wrong. I have it as an iPhone app. I also have the straws and the Chinese me.
Roger,
Have you seen and envied Neil Gaiman's basement bookshelves? I believe he employs a librarian, actually.
http://blog.shelfari.com/ronbrinkmann/2009/08/gaimans-bookshelf-details.html
It's pretty cool!
By the way, I'm a 7th Grade English teacher and I try to "furnish" my class with books so kids get used to the idea of having books around them. It's great.
Ever since I stumbled across Amazon Marketplace my room has filled up with apologues by old Russian prisoners and gay African Americans relocated in France assuaged by Nixonian muckraking and realist "revisionist" history. It's always astonishing to me that the 'Mona Lisa' is considered priceless but I can obtain 'War and Peace' for five dollars (shipping included). I'll take 'The Turn of the Screw' and a "Cafe noir." on Montebello overlooking the Notre Dame anyday over a poor women falling off her canvas amongst the gaggle of colloquial Tom Hanks fans.
[All this coming from a BFA in Painting. Sigh.]
I found a boxed edition of Proust's entire Recherche once. I was almost overcome by the instinct to kneel and start worshiping it. One of many such instances. The fact that in Turin libraries seem to sprout out of thin air like mushrooms doesn't make it any better, nor does it make my wallet any heavier. Fortunately, I have my parents to provide food and clothing for me.
Like you, I too have the reproduction of Shakespeare's Folio Edition, but I love to read it precisely because of the typography and spelling. I find it makes it easier to read as I have to "hear" the words in my head to be able to read them, giving me more of a sense of the spoken rhythm of his words. I made this happy discovery while reading "The Shakespearean Moment" by Patrick Cruttwell, which I highly recommend if you haven't read it.
And I understand the importance of unread books. Having books I haven't read around me is something of a moral imperative. It reminds me of how ignorant I am on a regular basis.
Just joyous reading these memories. Thanks Mr. Ebert. I'd just add I was lucky enough to be at Shakespeare and Co. the last week of August on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. There was a First Edition of "Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man." It almost made me cry just to hold it. Hopefully it finds a good protector.
I could never throw out my books either.
I am a Stephen King fan. I have read many of his books, and I enjoy going back and rereading passages. Every time I close "IT" (what I believe to be his best book), it feels like i'm saying goodbye to some good friends.
It's one of the reasons I love his books so much- the characters are so real, it's scary.
*sigh* It's a shame video games and movies are outsourcing books. If only more people would have the patience to sit down and read every now and then.
Roger, I admire and appreciate the way you pace your blog. Despair and resignation followed by uplift.
My birthday is Thursday and I could use bookshelves.
I need to start reading more. In this age of Netflix I've found myself consumed by an insatiable appetite for movies, movies, movies. Anyone who is simultaneously a bibliophile and cinephile must have unbelievable time-management skills.
@S M Rana: I love Goethe.
I read Goethe's Faust in German during high school. It's hard, sure, but it's extremely rewarding. As is Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.
Having said that, my favourite work of his is Iphigenie auf Tauris. It's gorgeous.
Seriously, don't get me started on Goethe. Because soon you'd tell me to Goethe hell.
The OED was a real communal effort, you know. There were, for example, two sisters who contributed something like 600 words and definitions. They just sent them in from their village in Cumbria, or somewhere. Amazing.
Even JRR Tolkien worked on a few words. Walrus, for example.
Ebert: Readers, this will strike you as decidedly odd, but I have decided to try out twittering.
NO!!! Don't press that button! There is no way back...
Hello Roger,
It is always a joy, and always rewarding, to find others like me. I also find it shocking how much we readers, or "literary addicts" as I like to joke, have in common.
For example I will meet another literary addict by chance, and we will discuss many of the things discussed in the above article and entries. We laugh about how our self control completely abandons us whenever we are in bookstores (especially used ones) or in libraries. We talk about how much trouble we have letting books go, and that we have entirely too many. When people aske me if I have read all my books I respond: "No, but I'm trying to." I am not alone: I have one friend who persistently snatches up first editions of books for her massive collection in her basement; even though she has barely begun to read them all. After we have confessed our hopeless book hoarding problem, we promptly begin reccomending books to each other only exacerbating the problem.
I must say my worst temptation of all was the Book Thing in Baltimore City. It is a wonderful place where you can take your old books to be given to others, and take out books for free. There is a limit of 15,000 per day. Per DAY. They have hundreds of thousands of books in there Mr. Ebert; you know what a temptation that is for people like us. My best friend and I agreed not to take more than five apiece, and we ended up filling the car trunk.
However, what I love most about meeting my fellow readers is the conversation! They always have something intersting to say because every reader is different, and you meet them in so many unexptected places. I had a Candy Store Clerk and devout Einstien historian tell me why Quantum Mechanics is madness in the form of math, and that string theory is being too reliant on its findings when it should be relying on the Theory of Relativity. I had a chef give me an extremely well informed lecture on why "Atlas Shrugged" is a horrible novel, and I should not waste my time with it. I intend to read it anyway, but in return I reccomended that he not read "Catcher in the Rye" a novel I despise. I have my reasons. I was working in a kitchen when I found myself in an arguement with a co-worker on whether or not the East and West will ever find peace in their respective philosophies. This paragraph could go on and on.
So, I will go on reading, taking more books than I can read, and seeking out other readers. They are growing scarce these days, but they are hidden out there.
Now Mr. Ebert. I am thinking of creating an organization called "Literary Addicts Anonymous" for those of us who have entirely too many books. We'll have sponsors, offer support for one another, and we'll even have meetings--in libraries of course.
@Steven Veach
Agreed. You know, a wise man once wrote "Stephen King, sometimes dismissed as merely a best-seller, has in his best novels some of the power of Dickens, who created worlds that enveloped us and populated them with colorful, peculiar, sharply seen characters. King in his strongest work is a storyteller likely to survive as Dickens has, despite the sniffs of the litcrit establishment."
This seems to be the posting following which everyone talks about his or her favorite books. Mine are the Aubrey/Maturin saga.
I seem to remember Roger writing in his Master and Commander review or somewhere that he liked the books, too. Have you read them all, though, Roger, or do a few remain on your shelf, future delights?
I have to admit I was envious reading about your home. I would be far more envious, though, if I hadn't recently visited a friend -- a brilliant friend with two graduate degrees who's a very fine poet, to boot -- who lives in much, much more modest surroundings. Unsafe surroundings, really. He had given away his books. I counted five or six and when we were in grad school together he had hundreds, I'm sure. It made me realize that we are fools to look at what other people have and be envious. The point is being happy with what you have.
Keep writing.
dave outside omaha
Ebert: I think if I hadn't met Chaz I would have never moved on from my previous digs, furniture found in resale shops, which one friend referred to as "Roger's Used Chair Museum." I am grateful to Chaz for the reboot of my life. And before those digs, the Dudaks...
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/05/and_say_my_glory_was_i_had_suc.html
To start things off I think I should say that I'm a school librarian, so naturally I'm biased towards books.
Recently, an expensive MA private school has decided to toss out it's books and replace the library with, well, I'll let the Boston Globe explain:
"Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.
...And to replace those old pulpy devices that have transmitted information since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony." [ http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/ ]
Brian Kenny, Editor-in-Chief of School Library Journal, a publication that does not shy away from new technology, has a great counterargument to this approach in his blog post, citing a great study from Publisher's Weekly: "Want to encourage reading? Then take advantage of the 86 titles on the 2009 Best Books for Young Adults list created by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Too bad your children will only have access to a handful of them—since most aren’t available digitally. And even if they were, according to a recent study of more than 3,000 teens by Teenreads.com, young adults prefer print (look for the full study in the October 26 issue of Publishers Weekly)." [ http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=talkbackCommentsFull&talk_back_header_id=6627292&articleid=ca6699099 ]
The current trend is to use more electronic resources in research. I personally think that the online version of World Book has superior usability when compared to the old paper encyclopedia. However in a rush to divest ourselves of old technology and "appeal to the sensibilities of today's plugged in kids" we are forgetting to consider what the children actually want and need.
Ebert: This news is appalling.
As much of a coffee fan as I am, I'm even more of a tea fan, especially when I'm reading an actual book (as oppose to reading online, which the world has been forcing me to do too much of these days).
You know what's my favorite part of a tea mug? The rings of speckled, charcole brown stain that quietly mark the inside of the mug. Like a vintage photograph, it speaks of the countless cups of reverence I've held in my palms in past hours, days, months, years. Countless moments of personal reflection, deep reverie, precocious daydreaming, and silly fantasies.
A well-read book does the same. You can feel the weight of its memories, test the weariness of its pages, and every flick of your fingers adds to its magic. I seriously feel that there are few things more beautiful than the gift of an old, used, personally meaningful book. You can write a message inside the front cover (hardcover, fountain pen, hopefully), foregoing the need of a card which will simply be lost through the passage of time. Thick, solid wrapping paper. No bow or ribbons. Maybe a cute sticker to keep it all together.
I actually don't have as many books as I should. Because I move so much, it's not practical to collect them now, both financially and spatially. I love libraries though. Sometimes you'll find little writings people leave on the margins, or pages dog earred, and I move my finger past the creases, feeling its rises and falls, wondering if they were doing a school project, writing a memoir, or perhaps needed to get some inspiration for a good note to their significant other. Were they reclined in a wooden rocking chair by the window sill, or maybe curled up in a coffeeshop beside the frosted glass, or maybe sitting upright in front of their huge, messy desk, facing a night of stars, with the fireplace cackling softly behind them? Maybe, maybe, maybe. All those possibilities.
When I finally find a nest...they will come by the trucks.
Ebert: And every precious stain tells its story. Even the occasional blood stain.
I want to hear this one.
Ebert: You want to be mindful when peeling vegetables toward where your thumb and index finger meet.
Ever since I saw the movie "After Life," I have stopped myself at the end of any particularly pleasant day to wonder if I would choose to spend all of eternity reliving the memory of that day. It sounds like yours would be easy to choose.
Several people mentioned Stephen King. He pretty much saved my life in my teenage years, when I realized that living half the year at my father's house was not good for my mental health, so I retreated to my room and devoured his entire ouevre. On Writing and The Stand still sit on my college apartment bookshelf, as do most of Kurt Vonnegut's work, several Cormac McCarthys, Richard Dawkins, King Lear, and some Onion books. I admit that my book collection is somewhat lacking, and I haven't been reading as much as I used to, but I do love a good book, especially since they've gotten me through so many hard times.
Ebert: It is clear from these comments that a great many readers value Stephen King.
I discovered Simenon's Maigret a little less than two years ago and I have now read all of the books that my local library has to offer and bought all the books that my two local used book stores had (there were only four that I hadn't read... sad). I am content however, as I now have something else to hope for at yard-sales and wayside used bookstores. I did try to branch out into Simenon's non-Maigret books but the darkness of them was too heavy for my tastes (three out of the eight or nine that I tried ended in either suicide or attempted suicide). The Maigret books are dark, there's no denying that, but you know that at the end, no matter how vile the crime, Maigret will head home, pipe clenched firmly in teeth, to Madame's soothing aperitifs and delectable meals.
Ebert: You will not soon run out of unread Simenons.
It seems after the divisiveness of your last posting you have found the perfect topic to bring us all together again.
How to explain the love of books and movies to those who just don't understand? How many people here have been asked, why don't you just get them from the library? It's not the same, you try to tell them, but they just don't get it.
When I lived in Hawaii, I owned a collection of almost a thousand books that I had crammed into tiny bookshelves that took up about half the space in my 300 square foot apartment. When it came time for me to move back to the mainland I slimmed down my collection a bit and shipped fifteen boxes of books out. All the rest of my worldly possessions went into three suitcases. I recently moved again to Florida, I brought 25 boxes with me, sixteen of which were books and movies. They literally make up most of my life.
The only way I can get people to understand the books is by telling them I'm an English major, which to most people is the only reason they can possibly comprehend for why someone would have so many. Who could possibly want all those books just for the sheer pleasure of it? The movies are a bit trickier. I've given up on trying to explain why I don't just go to Blockbuster or pirate them (interesting social experiment, try telling anyone you meet that you consider pirating movies amoral and catalogue the range of stunned incredulity you encounter), though even I have to admit the film collection has gotten a little out of hand. Once upon a time I operated upon the theory that my personal collection should only contain films that I would return to again and again, but at 350 odd titles and counting, that theory is starting to collapse under its own weight. Yet there isn't a single one of them I'm willing to part with.
Roger, I have often wondered if every thumbs-up review is in your movie collection or if you show more discrimination than that in your purchases.
Thanks, once again, for another post that resonates strongly with me. I taught high school English for ten years, and now I teach pre-service English teachers at the university level. One of the most productive pieces of writing I've had my students do over the years (and it's something I use again and again, regardless of the age of my students) is to describe their reading history, or reading autobiography.
They start by plotting their most memorable reading experiences on a timeline. It can include memories of being read to as a child, stumbling over first words, graduating from picture books to chapter books, latching onto to that first favorite author, etc. We talk for a while about the children's book canon and the Young Adult Literature canon, and why school seems to turn so many voracious readers against reading, at least for a little while (and this is certainly true of me; I didn't read any of the classics until I had to teach them).
The students share stories with each other and with me of their favorite reading experiences, and then they write their reading autobiographies. They describe cherished moments, interpretive struggles, favorite authors, and memorable texts, and trace any trends they notice in their histories. As a university professor, I want these future English teachers to remember what it was about reading that excited and inspired them in the first place. But just as (or perhaps more) importantly, I wanted my high school students to remember that reading is fun, and that long before they had to take quizzes on assigned reading or write essays that only asked them affirm their teacher's reading of the text, reading held a much different place in their lives. In the upper grades' push to have students read more efferently (reinforced by state standards documents and high-stakes testing), it seems vital for students to cling to the aesthetic pleasure of reading they had when they were younger.
I just graduated from college last spring and packed up all my books that I had collected during time there. I am reminded of what Philip Roth wrote in one of his Zuckerman novels when he said that he could tell that he had changed because every time he moved the number of boxes of books would increase. I enjoyed your essay very much.
I actually had to sell some of books this year to ensure that I would have gas in my car and ramen noodles in my kitchen cabinets. I sold books I never thought I would part with (Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) and books I wasn't quite sure why I still had is my possession (The Left Behind Series by Tim LaHaye and Jery B. Jenkins). Believe me when I say it was incredibly difficult.
We've clearly had similar relationships with books.
Mine started inauspiciously--Superman and Spider-Man comics--and didn't flourish until after high school quit making me read things in which I had little interest. I started with popular literature (Stephen King, Tom Clancy, etc.), reached out into sci-fi (Arthur Clarke, Frank Herbert, Aldous Huxley, etc.), and finally worked up to "great" literature (McCarthy, Homer, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Aescyhlus, etc.). I now can quote many sections of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a play I detested reading in the 11th grade, but whose imprint I now see in every good film that puts duty and loyalty in opposition.
I'll read most any relevent non-fiction, really, but much of my own personal library is filled with history, economics, and hard sciences. I've had many long lessons from Herodotus, Adam Smith, and Albert Einstein. I've seen the beginnings of a world war through Barbara Tuchman's eyes, the middle class through Karl Marx's, and the end of the universe through Stephen Hawking's. These are wonderful conversations that I'm glad to have had, but there is a sadness, too, that more people will never have them.
My bookshelves at home are like photo albums of travels I took in my mind; each book is a symbol of hours I spent absorbed in a new experience. Most of these books were good, some bad, and a few life-alteringly great. Throw any of these great memories away? Ridiculous.
I know exactly how you feel. When there is a book I want to read I try to find the oldest copy of it I can, not necessarily in good condition, but good enough to be a reader copy. Somehow that seems to add to the enjoyment of the experience of reading. I picked up an old R. L. Stevenson complete works and he quickly became my favorite author. Similarly I bought a century-old leather-bound pocket series of Scott's Waverly novels, but after reading a few I was contented to just look at them on the shelf. :) I collect old medical books for their unintended humor.
Regarding the Viking Sagas, I have not read it, but I saw a lousy version of that as a movie late at night on TV. See: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114851/ Bad, but I couldn't look away. It was beautiful, must have been filmed in Iceland but poorly executed. My most striking memory of that movie was the fantastic scenery with huge and heroic norsemen battling and riding around the best they could on their tiny little ponies. I suppose it was appropriate to the period, but awkward.
Ebert: I just don't get Scott.
What do you feed the elephants?
Ebert: They forage.
@ Heather - "..the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly." – Giles
BUFFY!
They loved books, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The writers were always dipping their quills into some old classic, and drawing from it inspiration for a storyline or character.
And that quote from Giles as supplied by Heather, sums up how many of us felt while watching the show; there's a little bit of Giles in all of us, those who love books. :)
Note: "Love: Penhaligon's scented treasury of verse and prose" - I have that little volume, hardbound, every page full-color plates boasting great English paintings of lovers and romance, gilded lettering on the spine, a box-case instead of a jacket; all the pages have been scented with Elizabethan Rose.
I've just opened it at random; behold the universe in all its playfully irony... smile...
"When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep..."
W B Yeats
@ Paul J. Marasa - "The happiest, sometimes most perilous, thing one can do with a beloved book is lend it out."
You've reminded me now of the last book I ever loaned out - and why I'll never loan another ever again to a non-artist! The works of James Tissot; painter. Purchased inside the Book shop at the Tate Gallery. Gone. He moved without telling me and with him, took my book. And I am not so kind, as to avoid wishing "karma" caught up him for it. For that jerk took a book about a painter from an artist an never returned it. Maybe there be a level of Dante's Hell just for YOU. :(
The Art Institute in Chicago has some of his drawings, meanwhile - including a girl reading a book in a hammock...
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/WebLarge/WebImg_000047/75051_320966.jpg
Tissot (a French painter who moved to England) is sometimes dismissed for being too Victorian Era chocolate box art, but I totally disagree. He's no more that than Charles Gibson was. The guy could DRAW! And you can see the skill of it underneath the paint.
"Young Lady in Boat"
http://megnorth.com/images/Young_Lady_in_a_Boat.jpg
Books are how I can take the brethren with me, wherever I go. I don't need the Internet or technology to feel close to them, when I've got them inside a book. Words convey ideas but so do pictures, too! :)
@ John - "I prefer the style and construction of older books. 1950's 60's and 70's. The style and quality are better, the typeface and font are more interesting and they seem to be better constructed."
The oldest book I own, is "The Gibson Book II" - published by Charles Scribner's Sons and copyrighted 1906. It's one 2 over-sized volumes with a red cloth cover featuring gilded decoration and lettering. It's features the work of the great American illustrator Charles Gibson. Drool!
Meanwhile, imagine being able to virtually walk around some of places written about in your favorite books? Imagine being able to look UP and see the sky above London on Oxford Street? Or snoop around a little, in Venice Italy.
Wouldn't that be wonderful? Oh, hey, it IS!
http://www.360cities.net/
Grin.
Thank you so much for this! I was just thinking the other day about all my books. I have very little shelf space, so many of them sit forgotten in boxes until they day I pull them out. There are many I've never read, some I have no intention of reading, but I can't part with them. Though I bought the fantastic 50th anniversary edition of Lord of the Rings, I still read the paperbacks I bought in fourth grade with the pages that are warped from when I dropped it in the bathtub. I still have my "Cat in the Hat Comes Back" (one of the greatest sequels ever written) that my little sister puked on during a thunderstorm. I work in a library, so I'm surrounded by good books and bad all the time. I read a lot, but only buy books I know will interest me or that are classics. I find I don't much like women authors, and don't like American writers as much as British ones (especially modern day; American writers of the 19th Century are a different thing entirely). I'm currently reading "The Third Policeman", which is great fun, and rabidly keep up with each volume of "The Complete Peanuts".
Mairin said: "I organize my bookshelves based on which writers I can imagine having the most interesting conversations."
-That is the cutest thing I've heard in a long time.
To those who posted about great books out of print, especially children's books, I second that! In college, a classmate introduced me to "Pickle-Chiffon Pie" by Jolly Roger Bradfield. It was then out of print. It finally was reissued a few years ago, and I bought a copy right away. I highly recommend it (Bradfield also used to do design work and cartoons for Sesame Street).
I will never ever ever ever ever own a kindle or any similar "e-book" reader. It may be all cool and "Star Trek"-y, but there's nothing like opening a book. I still use the worn Bible I got for Christmas when I was six. When I was told to clean my room, the part the took the longest was organizing the bookshelf. Yay, books!
Ever play that "desert island" game where you have to pick three books to take with you to a deserted island? My picks are (and this assumes the religious text of your choice is a given):
1. The Lord of the Rings
2. A Clockwork Orange
3. the Complete Calvin and Hobbes (which is sort of a cheat, since it's three big volumes in a box)
What would your picks be? Or if it's too hard, what might they be today?
Hello Roger, my name is Miguel Ramírez, and I´m from Mexico.
First, thank you for always share your thoughts with us.
I have a story of my life I want to share:
Talking about books, there is a providential moment in my life. One day when I was 15 (currently I'm 26), I saw a friend in the street. My friend (He is a priest, 70 years old) was carrying a large box filled with books. He told me he was going to throw away the box, in the garbage!! Oh no, I thought. I begged him to give me the box. Unfortunately he let me take 10 books only, but such wonderful authors I got from there: Mario Puzzo, Isaac Asimov, Stephen King, Jean M. Auel. I had never read a book of them. Currently, they are my favorite authors.
There are mysterious moments in life, get those books was like a miracle for me.
P.D. Sorry if I made a mistake in my writing, I'm still improving my English.
Greetings.
Ebert: It was so much better for him to find a home for them than throw them away.
Levar Burton started it all. I remember being in second grade when Reading Rainbow would come on. That theme song alone just made it so appealing to read; it made books sound like these amazing mystical things that would transport you to another dimension. I discovered dinosaurs through books, and how could any second grader resist dinosaurs? Later on Jerry Spinelli would really ignite my bromance with books with a book called Maniac Magee. But if any one person had the biggest influence on me, it was my dad. On weekends he would seen my sisters and I to the thrift store to find anything of value, and he always sent us to the book aisles to pick out what we wanted. I started my book collection with books by Michael Crichton, who gave us Jurassic Park - again with the dinosaurs!
But from Crichton on I discovered better authors and books that I thought I would never read. John Grisham kept me company in 8th grade; later I discovered Stephen King and then I found that dead authors wrote some of the best books in the universe - my favorites being Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. I began going on these thrift store raids myself and wandered the aisles of the many used book stores in my city looking for everything that stood out to me. I can easily drop 5 bucks for a stack of books as tall as a five year old. You know how some people will wait for a movie to come out on DVD? I wait for books to come out on Salvation Army.
I'm 25 years old now and basically live in a library, books just occupying as much shelf space on my entire wall and spilling onto the floor in stacks. To think that there are people who have collected even more books than I have just astounds me. I don't even think I will outlive the books that I've amassed throughout the years so I tend to be very picky about what I buy. I did the math - human beings on average have only hundreds of thousands of hours to live on this planet. I figure that to get my money's worth from the things that I purchase, I better enjoy them as much as I possibly can. I don't but a Playstation 3 because I have books in my room I haven't even opened yet, DVDs I've only seen twice, music I've listened to once. While I do play video games, I'll only play at a friend's house or online when I don't really feel like reading. But for me,actually investing in a gaming system would be pointless. Can you imagine the amount of time I would have to spend on a PS3, mastering all the video games available, to get my money's worth? Now, maybe if I lived a couple hundred years I might gives video games a shot. I think people have to pick and choose their interests; mine were pretty much chosen a long time ago.
Ebert: This is what I've been saying: Video games take uo too much time, and for what?
I just came across this by Harold Bloom:
"I am naïve enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough."
A few weeks ago I grabbed a ruler, started measuring, and concluded that if I stacked all my books in one big pile, it would be more than 60 feet tall. I've purchased the majority of them in the past 10 years, which means that if I keep up at my present rate, that stack will be approximately 200 feet tall by the time I'm 50.
I'm okay with that.
I watched the footage of 50,000 Books and immediately thought of The Book Thing of Baltimore, which exists to find books a home. It's one of the few places I'm happy to let books go. Their press page includes a few pictures of the appropriately disheveled old location; a Baltimore blogger has pictures of the more user friendly new place. (The rubber bins on the floor are where the books for young children are shelved.)
Ebert: I need a place like that.
y Ali Arikan on October 6, 2009 3:43 PM
@S M Rana: I love Goethe
THanks for the encouragement, Ali.I've enjoyed his poetry specially as rendered into Schubert lieder and as sung by Marian Anderson( Erlkonig and Tod und Madchen).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDMdNXut8Yc
I have started to comment 3 different times and failed miserably, because you said everything I would have said.
Books, hardback, paperback, fat, thin, old, brand new, electronic and digital...they are a good part of what makes life worth living. One of the things I love most about books is finding things I haven't read, because people recommend them. The book is then tied to the person in my mind. The net is wonderful for that. BTW, which Collette. I have read one or two by her, but what do you recommend?
It's hard to decide whether reading something new or re-reading something I have read before is better...a book that is my friend can comfort me better than chicken soup.
p.s. there's something different about a library book than a book that one owns, but the U of Illinois Library is getting ready to add its 11 millionth book.
Yay books! Plenty is never enough, I always say, just as long as you don't end up setting booby traps against would-be-thieves, or you might end up like the Collyer brothers!
http://www.answers.com/topic/collyer-brothers
Ebert: Readers, this will strike you as decidedly odd, but I have decided to try out twittering.
http://twitter.com/ebertchicago
This is one winged creature which shall keep it's uropygium determinedly bivouacked here betwixt these principally hirsute chested raconteurs. This unfledged recalcitrant literary arriviste votary of yours, cannot be importuned to squeak, cheep, tweet or, chirrup at any venue but this, replete with sophisticates that are sumptuous paramours of elusory cinema and felicitously bereft of subfuscous antediluvian cerebra cudgeled by phthisis.
Your perfervidly sedulous,
Indian Idiot (H.W.)
P.S. Indian Idiot (H.W.) is presently afflicted with the contagious ailment SNIPPY-OSIS and shall expeditiously convalesce to resurrect Indian Idiot (H.W.)'s first person panegyric and in course of his affliction, for his artless unctuousness is soliciting remission from Snippy Clement LXXXIII.
Ebert: Man, am I glad a poster on this thread told me there's an iPhone app for the Shorter Oxford Dictionary.
I just finished 'The Man Who Loved Books Too Much' and then found this blog post via Twitter. I love connecting with others who share my obsession.
I sit at my basement computer, surrounded by 4 bookcases gorged with books. They are jammed in correctly, backwards, sideways, stacked and packed any which way to accommodate as many as possible. Three of the stairs leading down here have piles of books balanced precariously, but not so much that the dog has knocked them down (at least in the last few months.) In the living room and the sun room are piles of books, and there are always a few on the coffee table or end table; open and upside down, or with markers noting the farthest point read so far. (Those are the ones "in progress.") They are hiding in my wife's office, under the CD collection, on the kitchen counter, each pile growing with time until the hazards of gravity become too evident and they are moved. Somewhere. Somewhere new, usually.
I have a Kindle, and it's fine, but it is not the same. It's like eating a Dinty Moore beef stew when what you really want is something cooked for hours by Polish ladies on the South Side and served on ancient china for $3.89 in a hole-in-the-wall bistro that nobody knows about.
The big book megastores have never particularly interested me, but on an RV trip a few years ago we wandered into Powell's in Portland, OR, and I knew I was home. Never before, and never again have I felt the comfort of a building (several buildings, actually) full of books arranged the way they ought to be: new, old, used, barely hanging together (but out-of-print), all together and yet categorized by some method or madness, all beckoning me in.
We lasted only the one afternoon, because we were already behind on the trip, but I daresay if I lived in Portland my house would be neater because I would be at Powell's most days, and that would be enough.
Ebert: You want to be mindful when peeling vegetables toward where your thumb and index finger meet.
The loo (what do you call it) is the ideal place for serious reading, Gandhiji called it his library.
Reading in rickshaws is easy but underlining is difficult. Same goes for buses and cars specially in the hills. Trains are good.
One way is to divide the book into say six parts and carry one on your person. This works fine when you are stuck with a lousy job you can spend the minutes in the loo getting ahead some paras.
The stuff has to be on your person constantly, in your pocket, even fifteen pages, or two. And if you don't want to shred it, the photostat can be made. Life has many minutes.
Sometimes when nothing is possible one can memorise a sentence or two and chew it during lunch time.
The shoe repair man will stitch it back into one piece for about 10 cents.
And when you discard, everything needs to find a home. If its a book, best is to give it someone(lending is lousy, sends bad vibes generally), sell it or give to a used book shop. There does come a time when athing don't belong. Then it's the right garbage in the right can.Different books merit different treatment. The spark notes to the garbage man. And the beloved friends must be treated individually. My Faust will probably remain maybe even I do not read it.
But Roger reading a book while cutting vegetables( grin. Ebert has to do that too) seems an extreme gymnastic for the act of reading.
Ebert: Sometimes in my idle time I compose limericks. This one came up earlier this evening:
'Twas on a midnight dark and drear
That Death came for my father dear.
From his tree root collection
I made a selection
And built dad's old-fashioned root bier.
Hello Mr. Ebert,
Before I begin this entry, let me establish my credentials. I am an avid literary addict, bibliophile, reader or whatever you choose to call someone who loves to read. I am a proud patron of the Book Thing in Baltimore City; that fine institution which was mentioned above. I am a lover of Joseph Heller, Joseph Conrad, Marcus Aurelius, Stephen King, Sidahartaha Guatama, Alan Moore, Clive Barker, Shakespeare, ect. I love books, and will not hesitate to reccomend them to broaden one's horizons. I to have entirely too many books in my room. I love the fact that you are choosing to write a post about books, and I love you chose a quote by Erasmus, my favorite Theologian, to begin the post. However, I have noticed that once again you are using this forum to bash video games.
Mr. Ebert I know this may seem rude of me, but I'm going to do it anyway: I'm going to defend certain videogames because certain videogames can be just as rewarding as a good novel.
Mr. Ebert, video games do exist in this world that are more than just mindless exercises in blowing things up. There are video games that understand the value of a good story, that engage your mind, and create memorable characters that stick with you for years. The problem is most of the public chooses not to buy them.
For example the dialouge in "The Legacy of Kain" Games is heavily influenced Shakespeare, and those memorable characters converse frequently.
You will never find characters more memorable than the ones in "Final Fantasy VII" who have flaws, troubles, virtues, hopes and dreams. When tragedy strikes your heart goes out to them.
Few gritty pulp noir novels are more absorbing as "Vampires the Masaquerade: Bloodlines" where you are drawn down into a nether city of intrigue and twisting alliances. Then you have to get out alive.
Finally, no game is as challenging to the mind as "MYST" and it has a great story to boot.
The most notable feature of these and other games is that you play them to enjoy the story. Isn't that why we read novels? Isn't that why we go to the movies? To enjoy the story?
I respect your opinon Mr. Ebert, and I will repeat that I to have a passion for reading. But I am tired of you using your clout to bash what can be a thoughtful, engaging, thrilling medium.
I have no trouble at all when it comes to getting rid of books - my wife's books. I would post more but I do have my own pile of books optimistically waiting to be read - ta ta for now.
Dear Roger,
May I call you Roger? Did you know you've been my friend for over 30 years? Thought it was time I tell you. I so love this blog. Will you promise to write a supply of them that can be published after your death so those of us left behind never run out?
I made a vow to myself I wasn't going to purchase any new books until those on my coffee table had been read, never mind the oodles on the bookshelves. Good thing I didn't become a nun because the vow lasted about two weeks. Wally Lamb was in town (Portland, OR) and his newest is in paperback so what's a girl to do when it's staring her in the face on the bookstore table? And when in Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival, one HAS to add either a Shakespeare-related book or a history book about the 15th or 16th century to the collection, doesn't one? Please don't tell me to just stay out of bookstores. It's physically impossible. And you may think you have the perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon but if you haven't been to our beloved Powell's you don't know what heaven is.
And did I mention we are a great movie town? My movie list is almost as long as my book list...
Anyhoo, take care and thanks for the joy you bring with your thoughtful musings.
I have...an awful lot of books. I *think* it is somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000, but as I have never had enough shelf space to put them all out at once, I lose track. But I *have* found a use for a Kindle. I really can't stand reading anything more than a few pages long online, and there are so many wonderful (or potentially wonderful) books that are now available for download absolutely free! A quick look finds me such titles as
A History of Giggleswick School (1912) by Edward Allen Bell
Old English Patent Medicines in America (1959) by George B. Griffenhagen
Our Moslem Sisters (1907) by Annie Van Sommer
The Camera Fiend (1911) by E. W. Hornung
I know nothing about these titles, except they caught my eye. If they caught my eye in a used book store I would certainly take a look at them. But how can I pass up the chance to check them out? I'd rather curl up with a book than a Kindle, but a Kindle's easier to curl up with than a laptop!
Your thoughts from those days past, ("What do I really need that isn't here in this room,") describe the perfect place of solitude. Simplicity allows us to think introspectively, and books are the guides to our deepest emotions. They are a powerful combination.
It's rare that a movie will make me feel as introspective as a book might. Certainly some do. I just watched "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring" (on your "Great" recommendation) by myself on a quiet and lonely day, and it achieved that same level of deep and quiet understanding. Another is "Only Yesterday" (good luck finding a copy in the US). But these are rare cases.
One obvious reason for this is that books have the time to work into the minds of their readers. But storytelling in movies also tend to favor the delve into group-consciousness; tending to be more social than personal. Movies have always been an activity wherein families, friends or co-workers share experiences. Movies work in analogous ways to books; just on a larger scale.
But there really is nothing like a small room, a rainy day, you by yourself, and a book of choice to teach you something you never knew about yourself. That is really special.
Video games do take up quite a bit of time, and often that time could be better spent. (I've often thought the same about bestselling potboilers.) That doesn't mean the experience is intrinsically bankrupt; I refuse to accept that it may or may not entertain and disproportionately hone certain basic cognitive functions and nothing more. Some developers take great pains to create simple, thought-provoking interactive stories, and when you find one, they are well worth the time. Two recent examples are Braid and The Path. Unfortunately, these are rarely games released by major developers/publishers, and generally escape the notice they deserve.
Since I moved to Boston a month ago, I've found two indie bookstores within easy traveling distance that shame Borders and B&N, and I'm already out of shelf space. In college, I visited the office of a professor whose shelves couldn't accommodate the hundreds of books she was forced to stack in enormous towers around the room. "These are just the ones I've brought to work," she said.
Roger, have you read this essay by Sergio Cicconi regarding hypertextual narratives? Its conclusions are illuminating.
Oh Roger, such wonderful words you write. Just today I had a long discussion with a much younger man about books we had read and loved. I can't think of a better way to get to know someone else.
Do you remember the episode of "The Twilight Zone" about the man who just wanted to read? His wife never let him have the time. Then someone dropped "the bomb" and he was the only person left alive. And he found a library! Heaven! But then he drops his glasses and steps on them. He's too blind to read without them. That was the saddest story I had ever seen. Now that's me. I'm only in my mid-fifties, but I've had 6 operations on my eyes. One is useless and the other not much better. BUT now my library has recorded books! I've listed to "The Kite Runner", read by the author!, "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "The Bone-setter's Daughter", also read by the author, and many more. A new kind of heaven!
Roger,
Thank you for your comments about books. This entry was simultaneously funny and nostalgic. I love your argument that you just can't throw these books away. It's obvious you have a fantastic passion for widely varying types of knowledge and this seems to be something that is rare in today's society. I love to hear someone excited telling me about their favorite books. It says so much about their personality, their ambitions, their passions, their intellect. Thanks for filling me in.
Arlo
Roger,
Thanks again for another beautiful entry. Walter Benjamin has a poignant little essay on book collecting, "Unpacking My Library", that you should read if you haven't already. Search your floors, I'm willing to bet you've got a copy of Illuminations somewhere.
I had a similar experience while studying abroad in Japan. Seeking a respite from a language I was still frustratingly unfamiliar with, I started reading heavily. While limited to the selection of English works available at my local bookstore in Osaka, the novels I read will be forever linked in my mind to that wild year. Huck Finn, On The Road, 1984, a couple Nick Hornby novels, David Sedaris essays, among others.
Checking in to that mournful flight home, my bags were too heavy thanks to my miniature library. Instead of giving them up, I took out both my winter coats and wore them on the plane. In August.
Regarding video games as art:
Per Wikipedia, art is the "process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions"; I agree with definition--or, I don't disagree with it: a narrower definition would be too exclusive, and a broader definition would be too inclusive, or simply nonsensical: "art is art".
Consider this literary example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure
Art, yes? Or does allowing a viewer to influence the final product bar that final product from being art?
If you ascribe to the latter view, video games cannot be considered art; however, if you ascribe to the former view, what bars a video game from being art?
Perhaps it is the programming process: arranging mathematics and coding; but how is this different than creating a novel? Mathematics requires a logical sequence to produce a logical output; writing is the same: if you want to say the sky is blue, you cannot say, The sky is red. Code functions the same way: a logical output requires a logical sequence; the languages are different, but the process is the same.
Consider CGI: a similar programming process is used, yet the resulting imagery [even poorly-rendered imagery, such as the CGI in Tron] is considered art; ergo, realism is not required, as the available technology limits the imagery: Transformers is more "realistic" than Tron, but which is better art?
It seems that the only remaining position opposing video games as art is, Allowing a viewer to influence the final product bars that final product from being art; to someone who has played many video games, and had as many emotional responses, this position seems illogical. Remember: dreck isn't necessarily representative of an entire genre; I don't consider Transformers or G.I. Joe indicative of all movies, so please don't consider mindless video games indicative of all video games. Now, let's get back to discussing books:
Welcome, Brother! Welcome! A man, his cave, his bowl and spoon, and his books to fire his imagination.
My father lived like that when we moved to a Victorian house where eventually I counted five bathrooms. We called him "Our Father, who art in the study."
I've since met many men of the same simplicity, yet must-have this and the other too. I understood each one of them. In 1997 I buried a soldering gun that I'd bought for five bucks at a Western Auto store thirty years before. I couldn't toss a thing in the trash that had been a trusty friend since I was sixteen, plastic handle long held together with duct tape. I teared up a little shoveling the last scoop of dirt over it.
I once babysat a man's 25 cats while he took a trip. They all curled up in the little office and bathroom that was his home, opening up to a wide spacious workshop that included a fireplace Beowulf would have demanded. The cats slept top of him on his cot, so I learned at bedtime.
Then there was Bill, a bus-stop friend who got around on a crutch. Bill can still be found at Ronstadt Station in downtown Tucson awaiting the Number 3 on a given afternoon. Middle aged grey, clean cut, always neatly dressed, highly articulate, cheerful, a book-and-paper laden briefcase. I always assumed he was a prof at the University where he'd also often catch the bus.
Then one day I met Bill while he was on a drunk. He told me that he'd been living in a tent at the edge of the desert for years now. He did used to be a teacher, had a Doctorate in English and a job working for a government program teaching illiterate kids in Guatemala.
Bill got so disgusted with the politics and bureaucracy, and yearned so for what we presume is the squalor of the uncivilized, that he quit the whole thing, returned to Tucson and decided to live in a tent in the desert. He'd come into town only for more books and to sell his blood for a good drunk every so often. Otherwise he got along with no money.
I thought long and hard. No, I guess I wouldn't sell my blood. Yet one who appreciates great literature and will not live as Bill does risks a troubled soul. I'll babysit Chaz for you if Bill's story tugs at yours too much too, Rodge. She couldn't be any harder to deal with than 25 cats in the same little room.
Books. Not only can they furnish a life, but they can change its direction, shape it, improve it, and define much of it. I am by nature a restless, busy, impatient, tense and probably arrogant soul. Give me a cup of tea - iced or hot - a dog at my feet, and a good book by anyone and about anything and I am the sea calmed. You can have the television. I would grudgingly surrender the computer. I would more grudgingly give up the radio (not happily would I forego the White Sox or NPR, odd bedfellows they may seem). Books? Leave me my books. Leave me the conversations that almost ring true but are just a little better executed than most live discussions. Leave me the word pictures of landscapes I may never see. Let me keep the wind and the wave and the howl I feel and see and hear only in my mind. Let me wander through the ages and to places I cannot go. I love books. Fiction. Non-fiction. Graphic novels. Books of cartography. Photography. Geography. Theology. I believe - I really do believe - that I have read books I did not like, but I have never read a book I did not enjoy reading.
Kevin Coombs
I keep my books because the one I love may be edited beyond my comprehension for any version I might be able to afford, and I've noticed that small calfskin collections of stories are not for sale in Border's anymore.Treasure Island lost to commercial cuteness, Nostromos by Conrad no longer politically correct, are some examples of what I'm afraid will become long lost if I pass them on. I am willing to lose or donate all LombsangRampa's books and the entire Lensmen series given away long ago. My Barefoot Doctor reference book falls apart and must go, but the entire collection of Jack Vance or my Archy and Mehitabel books I'll always keep. I do have the first book I ever bought,Pride and Prejudice when I was an advanced 4th grader. My daughter tells me when I die she will burn it all or give it away.I recently bought The Complete Dorothy Parker which may help me resign myself to this.
One of my prized possessions is a copy of Roger Ebert's Book of Film, kindly autographed by the author.
Thank you Roger.
Books can be bossy, and nagging: "Why haven't you read me yet? You bought me three years ago!" Or, "You're not smart enough to finish me!" So I keep a the handful of friendly ones near my bed, and consign the rest to the basement, which has a riot of floor-to-ceiling books.
Thank you so much for putting into words the magic of books in such an articulate and entertaining manner. I’d often been at a loss to explain why I did not want to get rid of old books, it just didn’t feel right – much the same as throwing away a photograph does not feel right – even one which is going to sit in an old album and gather dust.
As someone with an almost overriding passion for history, books provide a wonderful opportunity – the opportunity to hear the words of Homer, to learn at the feet of Herodotus, to listen to the words of long dead Poets and Generals, Kings and Adventurers. No other ‘medium’ can allow you to travel to the South Pole with Shackelton, to ride with the hussars of Colonel Marbot, to listen to the words of Cicero, to the ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire and Marx, and a myriad of other experiences as many and as varied as the stars. And that’s not even touching fiction! Comparatively, computer games really do pale into insignificance. Why waste time with them when there are a thousand lifetimes worth of books to be read!
Speaking of fiction, I must thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world that is the work of PG Wodehouse. After reading a mention of his work in one of your reviews, I picked up a cheap copy of Life at Blandings, and he has since become one of my favourite authors. Wodehouse has also in a roundabout way led me more recently into the novels of Stephen Fry, which I’m devouring at a great rate of knots.
As a fellow owner of both an Icelandic saga (Njal’s I believe) and Winston Churchill’s Second World War – along with a gargantuan pile of others - I’m sure there will be a day that I’ll feel just like reading them.
Thanks again Roger for such a wonderful article.
Thanks for posting, Mr. Ebert. But all this does is remind me of how much I need/want to read, and how little time there is in this life. How completely paralyzing.
But thanks just the same!
Hi again Roger,
Even though, like most people, I have no room to store any more than a cursory number of books I have still managed to snag and hold on to some of the ones you mentioned as well as some others mentioned within the responses.
However there is one book that has been something of an Albatross around my neck for years. No matter what I do I cannot bring myself to throw, or give it, away. It has missing pages taken by friends at random times over the last (almost) 40 years as well as notes and scribbles and taped on cover. It has been used to cover a hole in an old cane chair and as as a prop when necessary. It probably has experienced more caresses from the gluteus maximuses of visiting friends than any other book in existence. It weighs enough and is of a size that when you want to take the curl out of a piece of paper you can use it as the first book underneath all of the other books. It has a wealth of information included and sometimes when you least expect it to, it comes in very, very handy. I have moved with it many times and one time it didn't even get unpacked for at least 10 years. When I eventually opened up that particular box I found all my Tom Swift, Tom Swift Jr. and Hardy Boys underneath it.
I am speaking of course of "The Whole Earth Catalog" published by Stewart Brand. A friend of mine gave me my copy for my 21st birthday. At the time I guess I was living kind of a counterculture existence and the catalog was kind of a right of passage. If you owned one and had it out where others could see it when they came over to get a buzz it invariably became a topic of conversation. Everybody loved it and if you were high enough every single thing it contained seemed as relevant as sunshine in summer and just about as fun.
Here's hoping that yours is somewhere close at hand.
John
PS: They may not be everyone's idea of classic literature but I still have my "Furry Freak Brothers" collection.
Thanks for this post!
I'm starting to become a bit of a bibliophile/book collector, and this was encouraging! My collection only amounts to about 300 at this time, but hey, you have to start somewhere... :)
It was enjoyable to see someone else who enjoys books for the same reasons (both reading them and well...having them). The section about Chaz commenting about how many of them will remain unread by you was classic and made me laugh. You see, my wife is already saying the same to me in regards to my small collection....
Favorite memory as a child: Robinson Crusoe. By far it brings back the strongest emotional response when I recall the joy it brought upon first read. This would have been somewhere around 11-12.
As an adult, Tolkien moves me more than anyone, though Richard Russo is a modern favorite. C.S. Lewis was gifted beyond belief. Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels are amazing. Dostoevsky shouldn't be missed. And the list goes on...
I hope to teach myself Latin and Greek when I finish graduate school in order to read so many great texts in their original language. You've inspired me to not give up on that goal.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Thanks for the inspiring post!
I own about 1,100 books (well, 1130 if you want an exact figure. Yes, I have a spreadsheet with all the details of my books). I've been spending too much on books for a very long time, and of course every now and again I read them.
I'm lucky enough that in Brisbane, Australia, we have a 6-monthly Lifeline Bookfest, which is a massive charity based second hand book sale. The good Lifeline people hire out the Brisbane Convention Centre, which is absolutely massive, and then they fill hundreds of long rectangular tables with books sorted into quality, then category. Books in the mid-price section (code for books that have been read, have slightly yellowed pages, but are otherwise absolutely fine) range between $1.50 and $3.50 AUD in price, with most hovering between $2.50 and $3.
Each Bookfest, my brother and I take a shopping trolley and fill it with books. He loves philosophy and I love literature, so we are able to pillage our own areas without worrying that the other might pick up an absolute gem. What makes things even nicer about the Bookfest is that on the last day they do 'fill a bag for $5', which should be pretty self-explanatory. If you smile and wink you can overfill the bags, too. At any rate, last Bookfest I purchased 174 books for about $320, which really is simply amazing.
I do love reading. Very much. I review books on my website, which is linked through my name, but there are tens and tens of books I read without reviewing as well. A book is the friend you have with you always, even when you are with other friends and especially when you are not.
I have a room devoted to my books. My system is that when I have read a book, it goes on my bookshelf. Otherwise I keep them stacked in piles about a metre tall on the floor. I have five full shelves, and maybe twelve stacks of books. I have been trying for years to decrease the height and amount of my stacks, but I always seem to buy enough new books that I never really get anywhere.
The 50,000 books Youtube video was interesting. There is a second-hand bookstore in Brisbane that boasts over a million books. I expect some of that figure is taken up with hyperbole, but the store is absolutely massive and I'd put it to 150,000 at least. It's absolutely amazing to see.
This Thursday is Nobel Prize day, which makes it a very special time for booklovers. I hope Stoppard, or Llosa, or Mulisch, or Antunes wins, but I'm generally pretty happy with the Academy's choices. We shall see.
When I was a little boy, my parents used to take me out to eat to K&W Cafeteria for some fine suburban dining. Afterwards, we would go to the Books A Million across the street. It never failed that when we walked into the store, the smell of thousands of books would propel my stomach instantly towards the bathroom in the back. The literary laxative is the best one on the market! To this day, as a 21 year old college English major, I still walk into that Books A Million and rush towards the bathroom.
You have posted a fine entry on the romance of reading, which allures us to those quiet nooks in the library, to those dazzling conversations we have with practical strangers, to the coffee-stained pages of books we hold on to simply because they are there in front of us, to the feel of the book spine resting in our hands, and to the quiet nights where our chins descend upon our chests as we fall into a dreamful sleep.
I'm a college senior, Roger, currently trying to tackle and balance Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Shakespeare's Coriolanus, and an American Film genres course. It's the most demanding semester of my life, but an absolute joy and pleasure. Every day is a discovery. Your blog has inspired me to keep flipping the pages. I walk around with my highlighter in my hand, and quotations floating around in my brain.
Ebert: Readers, this will strike you as decidedly odd, but I have decided to try out twittering.
I joined twitter this week, too. I feel like a sellout. I was vehemently opposed to it for the longest time. I just didn't understand. 140 characters to say what? That I'm eating dinner or am at a baseball game or am watching a movie? And now that I've joined, I still don't get it. We'll see how it goes. What are your thoughts on twitter?
First, a nitpicking little correction: Rodinsky's Room was co-authored by Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair. Like just about everything Sinclair is involved with, it's well worth reading, as is the fictionalized version of the Rodinsky story that appears in Sinclair's novel Downriver.
I also have about 4000 books in my home. Most of them are shelved, but some are stacked in freestanding 4 foot-high towers. (Fortunately I live in Ohio, where earthquakes are rare.) My living quarters aren't quite as book-dominated as the rooms of the eponymous lover in Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but they are getting there. I too still remember where I bought just about every book I own: the volume of John Ashbery's poetry that I purchased from George Whitman in Paris; the first American edition of Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark (the author's name is spelled 'Nabokoff' on the spine) that I picked up for fifty cents at a charity book sale in Cleveland; the copy of Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet that the author signed for me at a bookstore in San Francisco; the Bantam paperback of A Tale of Two Cities that I bought when I was 12...Because every book I buy is purchased with the intention of being read (I'm a reader as opposed to a collector), a search of my bookshelves is like an archaeological dig into my mind.
Resting atop a nearby book tower as I type this is my copy of Mario Vargas Llosa's The Perpetual Orgy. The book's epigraph, from Flaubert, fits the subject of this blog: "The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy." Perhaps we should all aspire to be perpetual orgiasts.
Ebert: Rodinsky repaired.
Flaubert is right as he so often is.
Ahh, the written word. My first, and only constant, true love. With a book, I am sometimes a Casanova, a St. Francis, a Stranger in a Strange Land, a weary traveler, a wide-eyed optimist, a hopeless cynic, a masochist, a belly-laugher, a faster, a Cookie Monster. I have a book for breaks at work, one for the car, one for the house, a stack on the toilet tank... Hell, I've been known to take one into the movie theater, so I don't have to watch the damn commercials that play before the lights go down for the coming attractions.
I think you would like my acquaintance, Steve Ross, whose organization has libraries in Sedona, AZ; Los Angeles, CA; and Munich, Germany. Each of these libraries is filled with books about healing modalities from around the world. Some are just a few years old, and others are closer to 1,000 years. One of the greatest thrills of my relatively short life was when he first showed me his Sedona library, and handed me a >300-year-old book about medicine. "This is the oldest one here," he told me. "I've got better ones in Germany."
I recommend Larry McMurtry's Walter Benjamin and the Dairy Queen. My neighbor to the two hours south also has affectionate words for his book collection. Benjamin said something about the importance of the "aura of books." When writing or studying in such an atmosphere it's like your putting your missives into that vast community....
Good stuff, Roger.
Danny M, 24, OKC,OK
I helped two students navigate their way through a university library today. I'm not employed there but I quickly say that they didn't understand how a library works. They dewey decimal system made no sense to them. As for my own collection of books, I admit, it's not extensive but what it contains fills me with joy: a first edition of Heinrich Zimmer's Art of Indian Asia, a now complete collection of the (never finished) Historical Atlas of World Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Adventures of the Mind (selections from the Saturday Evening Post), and a small, leather-bound, red letter edition King James Bible, to name a few.
Of course, there are books I will never get rid of and will always replace if I should lose them somehow. These include Edith Hamilton's Mythology, a book I've loved since I was a boy, Man and His Symbols by Jung et al, a book I've loved since I was a teen, Sometimes a great Notion, Edgar Allen Poe: the Complete Stories, and Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl.
Ebert: "It is clear from these comments that a great many readers value Stephen King."
King's book On Writing shares desk space with my two hard cover dictionaries, an AP Stylebook and, of course my Fowler's and The Elements of Style. I guess I read a lot of non-fiction. As a student, I rarely sell back books I've purchased for school unless they're those texts designed specifically for undergrad survey courses (even those I often keep because they serve as excellent reference books. Those are the ones that begin with the author saying things like "I wrote this introduction to Anthropology because I really love Anthropology and I want you to love it, too." But, if I need a name, an idea of who's who, or a quick definition of a term, those are what I turn to.
~Mike
I have maybe a quarter of the books I had last year. Why? Well, I'm in Amazon Vine (an exclusive readers club, as I like to brag to anyone who will sit still for more than three seconds), and they sent me a Kindle. I hate to use this phrase in relation to a device, but it's (sigh) changed my life. *wince*
I've gotten so accustomed to reading on the Kindle that I've found it hard to go back and read regular books (though I just finished Jehan Sadat's My Hope for Peace, an exceptional read). Why bother with "real" books when I have my Kindle?
Also, frankly, I've got limited shelf-space and having books in digital form means that I could free up my shelves for my ever-expanding DVD collection (566 titles and rising weekly). So I began converting my books onto the Kindle and took the ones I now had both in book and digital form and gave the book copies to a friend of mine who works at a used book store. At least they'll go onto other people who will love them.
That said, much as I love my Kindle, there's certain books that I'll keep forever. My complete works of Shakespeare comes to mind, as does Pratchett's The Last Hero as its illustrations won't transition well. And, yes, I still have my hardcover copy of Awake in the Dark, and plan to hold onto it. Hey, if I come to Chicago, can I get it signed? ;)
I love reading, but I've come to the conclusion lately that it's the content, and not the medium, that matters most to me.
Roger,
I've been out of touch with the world of books and reading unfortunately for quite some time. I was hoping you could direct me to a list of great novels to read and engulf myself in. If you could, avoid high school required readings because, well, I've read them. I really have a desire and a need to enrich my life with novels, and not just intelligent TV and film. A man of your reading could certainly enlighten me to some fascinating reads. Thanks a bunch.
Ebert: Start with Fine Balance y Rohinton Mistry.
"Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know."
That reminds me- in your 2006 review of 'Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story', you claimed that you had started reading Sterne's novel in 1965 and that you "intend to finish it any day now". Ever gonna make good on that promise?
Ebert: I keep procrastinating. :)
I love books. I've lined up my entire room with books. Stacks and stacks of them. When I was growing up, my library would have a used book sale every Saturday and I would go every Saturday for years and years. The number of books grew and I read many and many of them. This year, I finally decided to donate some of them back. I hope some kids will enjoy them like I have. Books (and movies) are truely the closest thing we have to magic.
That reminds me- in your 2006 review of 'Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story', you wrote that you started Sterne's novel in 1965 and that you "intend to finish it any day now". Ever gonna make good on that promise?
Ebert: I keep procrastinating. :)
Prince Modupe, of Africa, from his book 'I Was A Savage'
My own used book store of choice is Red River Books. It's downtown, in an old building surrounded by other old buildings and a couple of coffee shops, a little park and a film school. You take three stone steps and there's the big wooden door with it's old brass doorknob. There is no landing, they didn't seem to make them back then. It's just three steps and a door. You have to give the latch a good hard squeeze and a forceful push. This must be done simultaneously. Once inside you will be in a very large room with high ceilings and ancient floorboards, which will creak and groan with every step as you weave your way along. And weave you must, for the path is laid out for you with snowbanks of books marking the way. Some piled knee high in wobbly stacks that look like upside down pyramids. It seems the majority of the books are stored this way. The rest are in bookshelves which tower over you. On occasion you will meet a fellow browser coming from the other direction, at which point, one of you will be forced to retreat. Or, if you happen to be greeted with a pleasant smile from a pretty girl, you could attempt the more intimate half-turn pass, but mind the pyramids.
Obscure music will be softly playing, ranging from a melody of kabuki drums and gregorian chants to haunting ballads played on a didgeridoo. Behind the counter there will be a man that looks like Sam Elliot in Roadhouse, only you'd have to add about 20 years and make him deaf. When his wife asks him a question she will do it two notches below the top of her lungs, to which he will reply....'what?'....which will raise her question another notch. I'm not sure if this system is a requirement of his deafness or it's cause. Be that as it is, it's best not to attempt questions with the husband, direct them at the wife.
Milk crates are scattered about to help you reach the higher shelves, but just as often you'll see people sitting on them as they pour over some old yellowing book. It's best to find four or five books before finding a milk crate, lest you be forced to give up your seat prematurely. The price of the book will be written in faded pencil in the top right corner of the first page. Three or four dollars is the norm, but some go as high as thirty. Old hard cover books of particular value can be even more, but sometimes you'll see the old prices rubbed away and the new one written overtop. All prices are negotiable, but most people don't bother. You can bring an armful of books to the counter, and after it's all added up, pay no more than twenty bucks for a pretty good haul. It's preferred that you bring your own bag to carry them away.
I have a few cherished books. The Lord of the Rings has already been mentioned and I'll add my name to that list. My old copy of The Fellowship is literally rounded at the corners with a good hunk of masking tape along it's spine as a reinforcement. Opposite the spine on the page side is a dark streak, where my ink stained thumb has left it's mark. The cover is worn and cracked. It's a good ol' lived in book with history, all of it mine, because it was new when I bought it. I have other cherished books in my bookcase, but most of them are in boxes. When I moved, people always grumbled and groaned if they got a bookbox to carry. I have other books scattered around, most of them half-read. It's rare that a book gets read cover to cover without an interruption...by another book. I usually hop around and finish them in fits and starts. There are three of them on my nightstand right now, two more in front of me on the coffee table. Now-a-days they are mostly reference books. My coffee table books are Evolution vs Creationism by Eugenie Scott (for the Darwin threads) and Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, from which the top quote was discovered. McLuhan says that the written word gave rise to the independent man as opposed to the tribal man. The independent man is capable of an informed and personal point of view, where as the tribal man marches to the beat of the tribal drum. He goes on to say that "the printed word with it's specialist intensity broke the bonds of medieval guilds and monasteries, creating extreme individualist patterns of enterprise and monopoly". In his prediction of the internet he is known to have described it's effect as regressing man backward to a tribal nature..."the human family now exists under conditions of a 'global village'. We live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums." And so it goes, Roger strikes the drum, and we resonate our response...boom boom boom. A response which is impossible in a book format where all our reactions are internal. That I think is why we love them. OH, another book on the coffee table, Running Away to Sea - Round the world on a tramp freighter by George Fetherling. Just to keep things light.
I found the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as an app for the iPhone. It's pricey as far as iPhone apps, but much less costly than the paperback edition. I'm delighted with it, all 600,000 words. (I love my I Ching app as well, BTW.)
The free Kindle app for the iPhone is, by the way, a better electronic reader than the Kindle. The reason: it's backlit, whereas the Kindle relies on reflected light. So far the contrast on the Kindle is no good (at least for my eyes). All in all, despite two attempts to love the Kindle, I never good work up much passion for it.
A final question: didn't you once say that you like long books? Seems like I read that in one of your columns, along with a recommendation for a book that sounded really interesting. The best I can recall is that it was "The Quincunx," which I stand ready to buy based on your recommendation.
Off to see what you're up to on Twitter. I've had great fun with it -- there's a whole world of good people trading good ideas, links, and info on Twitter. Wish it didn't have such a stupid name, though!
Thanks as always for the blog.....
Ebert: Yes, The Quincunx.
The title describes the plot:
"n. An arrangement of five objects with one at each corner of a rectangle or square and one at the center."
About video games, I personally think they are like movies; some are art, some are insulting to the idea of art. Games can be art, or for socializing/competing, or both.
"Allowing a viewer to influence the final product bars that final product from being art". Doesn't all art depend on individual interpretation that comes from the person's own experiences? Only more often it is in a more passive role. In video games, it is a more involving experience. And it is still constructed in a very particular way for you to play through and experience it.
Art is supposed to make you feel something, isn't it? Besides boredom. I've played plenty of games that have made me feel more than a lot of movies I've seen or books I've read. The death of a character you talked to or played as can affect you more than one you only read about or saw on screen. You feel their absence even more.
But it doesn't surprise me that many oppose the idea of video games as art. They said that about comics until Moore and Gaiman came around. And look at television. I'd hardly consider Deal or No Deal or Big Brother to be art, but Battlestar Galactica and The Shield, absolutely I would.
And with regards to Ebert's opinion, and I don't mean this in a condescending way, I really don't think he is informed enough or had enough experience with them like he has with film and literature. But I'm not setting out to change his mind. If he has no interest in them, that's fine. If he were campaigning to have them banned or something like that, then it would be a different story.
As a final question, how can something that requires the arts in order to be made not be art once it is finished? It's a serious question. Maybe somebody can think of something I can't.
For the book topic, I recommend Frankenstein to anybody who hasn't read it. Or Crime and Punishment.
I don't know how many books we have, although I once calculated that we have about 800 linear feet of bookshelves, mostly doubled-up and stuffed to the gills. And this in a 1,200 sq.ft. house.
I'm convinced this is the main reason why we haven't moved in 15 years.
We are actually due for a book cull, which we achieve by taking any books we have no interest in reading again to a wonderful place in town called 'Recycled Reading'. They'll give you 1/4 of the jacket price for any book you bring in as store credit, which you can then use to buy used books there for 1/2 the jacket price. I've bought most of my Steinbeck collection there.
(seriously - who the hell throws out books?!)
Our most valued books: my four volume set of Joseph Campbell's 'Historical Atlas of World Mythology', and my husband's signed 1st edition Penguin paperback of 'A Clockwork Orange'. Oh, and my 'Illustrated Compendium of Children's Literature', which I've literally had since I was a child.
BTW, my husband appreciates your taste in luncheons. Surprised you didn't mention Branston Pickle, though. And Hob Nobs? Those are Chocolate Digestives, thank you very much.
One further thought before bed: I don't read nearly enough ever since I quit smoking. That was my thing - have a smoke on the front porch and read. Ten minutes a cigarette, a cigarette every hour or two, it adds up.
These days, I do most of my reading either at the laundromat or in the tub with my morning coffee. I feel like I've been reading John Ralston Saul's 'Voltaire's Bastards' for a year.
Finally in this age of e-books and reading devices and text to speech machines somebody has written on books (both paperback and hardbound). I wonder how these machines can ever replace the smell of print on paper or the smell of a used and leafed through book from a shelf.
Luckily both my wife and I share a fetish for books. But your collection is something to die for!!!
What compares to a page's perfume: dust and ash; a forgotten candle's fragrance; perhaps a distant dinner's aroma soaked into the page; or maybe an earthen scent still lingers from the page's oaken origin. Yes, the text, always the text, but the smell of a book can be equally intoxicating to the bibliophile; it tells a secondary story.
A novel sold in a seaside store will tell a different secondary story than the same novel sold in a bucolic bookshop: the salt-soaked pages might contain some chantey; the countryside's pages might smell of wintertime firesides, or languorous summer nights.
The secondary story can only be told so often: open the book, smell the pages, and the perfume is polluted by the surrounding aromas. But bury the book under other unread books--let it be forgotten while other books are read; and then, after it has fermented, open it again: a whole new story of smells has writte