Balancing the Books

              What to do with all these books?

              There are so many of them, filling tall shelves all over the house, and stacked on tables and deskstops here and there. And I keep buying more. I love books.

              Years and years ago, after moving almost a dozen times, and going through many variations of book turnover and re-cycling, I gave myself permission to be a glutton about my books, to never discard another that I didn’t want to part with.

              I love the over-indulgence. Love having rows and rows of books I’ve read and remember the joy of discovering, and ones that tantalize but that I haven't dipped into yet. By habit, I organize my books according to size, to be efficient with the use of space, at least. Otherwise, they are shelved randomly, so that I can have a paperback of classic sci-fi short fiction next to a textbook on economics, abutting a recent novel by an unknown that I picked up in a remainder’s bin, then a biography next to an all-time favorite epic.

              But books are dusty and heavy! And down-sizing is going to come, sooner or later. I dread having to move again before I've thinned these shelves! As loved as they are, I begin to think about living without all of these books within arm's reach. And as I prepare myself for that psychic shock, a desire grows to somehow catalog my books so that, once they’re gone, I have a way of maintaining touch with them.

              And Goodreads.com has appeared as a helpful solution. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to list the books I’ve read in my life under the “My Books” tab on the site. I don’t expect to get all of them, but hopefully I’ll be able to sketch out the highlights of a long, soulful connection with worlds on pages.

              In my first two or three visits to the site, I just added books by memory as I could recall them, but I didn't even come up with two hundred titles. Going through some of the ‘Favorites’ lists on Goodreads got me another few hundred. Then, I spent time at my actual book shelves, adding a few hundred more. 

              But I knew that, despite my long ago allowance to myself, there were lots of books I’d read and loved that were neither of my growing list, nor on the shelves throughout the house. And that’s what brought me to my journals.

              Over the last week or so, I’ve been scanning my thirty-plus artist's sketch books, filled with my self-conscious document of my times: my wonderings and wanderings, my steps and stretches toward figuring myself out, with all the jobs, the dreams, the adventures, loves and travels of living my life. 

               Among the photos, drawings, notes to self and ticket stubs in my journals were lists of books I'd read, and I went looking for them.  And I've been finding them one at a time, and each time I'm taken down a side road I'd forgotten, picking up scraps of those different people I've been and have known and lived among. All from the titles of books and their authors' names, sometimes a sentence or two about how the work struck me.

               I was surprised at having failed to remember so many books that worked magic upon me at some time, that had wholly possessed me, had prodded me along my path. But the memories came rushing back. I was more surprised at the so many other books that I couldn't remember reading even after confronting the evidence of my lists and my notes! There is such an interesting contrast between those books remembered in vivid detail, decades after a single reading, and those that are completely forgotten. Of course, it's like that with people, too. And looking through my journals never fails to remind me of the peculiar workings of my own mind.

               It's been a fun way to spend some of my self-isolation time since my jaunt into New York State. I'm enjoying these wonderful, brief visitations with the books of my life, with the other minds that wrote them, and into the worlds they spin. It's a joy I'll never give up entirely.

p.s. One of the small side bonuses of the pandemic has been peeking into the private domiciles of media figures, and those of friends/acquaintances I've connected to virtually. I love catching glimpses of their bookshelves and trying to read a title or two!