Shelves, Chairs, and Good Lighting
How, where, when, what?
“I’ve got six hulking double-sided bookcases, purchased from Borders when they went out of business, just sitting in my garage, waiting for a space to put them in. My wife draws the line at the dining room, even though we could easily eat our meals on trays.”—Michael Dirda, from Browsings
I’ve run out space on my bookshelves.
I still have wall space, so I tried to order more shelves from Ikea, but the shelves I want can’t be delivered here. I live in the Sacramento Valley. There’s an Ikea about 30 miles from here. I don’t understand.
In 1964 when I was newly married, we made bookshelves out of boards and bricks. Remember those? And when we needed more shelf space, we could add another layer of bricks and another board. But I was younger then, and it never occurred to me that I would someday need a whole house lined with bookshelves if I wanted to keep them all.
Over the years I’ve had to let many books go, usually because of a cross-country move. (Books are heavy and cross-country movers charge by the pound.) The townhouse I moved out of in Colorado had built-in shelves on two walls of the second bedroom, which meant that I was short of shelves as soon as I got to California. So my books lived in boxes stacked two-deep in the living room and served as a kind of room divider / ungainly coffee table until we bought bookcases. I filled those up immediately. Then a couple of years ago I inherited more bookcases and immediately filled those. It’s not as if I’m going to stop buying books. I love books—not just for the stories they contain but for their invitation, their covers that beckon, those words on the spine that you have to tilt your head to read when you’re visiting a friend who also loves books and you put off lunch or conversation or whatever your reason is for being there—so you can continue to read book titles with your head tilted until finally the pain makes you stand up straight and engage with your friend. I love books for the way they smell and the way they look and how their presence on my shelves creates a kind of story: I read that one when I was sick with the flu and it was snowing (Beloved by Toni Morrison); I read this one over here from bed, staying up past my bedtime every night because I couldn’t put it down (The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt); and this whole bookcase here represents six years of college and all the associated memories.
My fantasy house has bookshelves on every wall and back-to-back bookshelves as a room divider. The ceilings are so tall that I have to have one of those library ladders on wheels so I can reach the upper shelves, which I don’t have to do very often because those are the books I’ve already read and maybe won’t want to reread. Is this a common fantasy for other people who keep their books? I don’t have a fantasy plan for what to do when all of the fantasy bookshelves are full of real books. But because it’s a fantasy house, the house itself can keep expanding. Also in every room of this house are comfortable chairs or sofas, good reading lamps, side tables to hold a cup of hot tea (winter) or iced tea (summer) with plenty of surface space for sticky notes, a snack, reading glasses, my phone (for looking up words I don’t know).
Do you have a fantasy house for books? What’s it like?
These days I lie on the sofa to read, and I have that reading lamp and that little table, maybe a space heater (winter) or a floor fan (summer), often more than one book within reach, and a little book pillow to rest the hardbacks on. I also read in bed—which does not put me to sleep. I wish it did (insomnia). Even when I was single, I needed a big bed—for all the books and reading paraphernalia that I like to have on hand: like my booklight and notebooks and those little stickies.
What’s your favorite reading experience? Bed, chair, sofa?
One of the benefits of reading on a Kindle (mine is the Paperwhite) is that storing the books is not an issue, I don’t need a reading lamp, I don’t need stickies (did you know you can highlight favorite passages and download a pdf of them to your email inbox?), and the device itself is very lightweight, so I don’t need one of those book pillows. But—and this is a big but for me—my brain tells me that if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. This is why I can’t have file cabinets and why I prefer keeping a journal by hand. So I know that I own many Kindle books that I don’t even know I own because there are, currently, 844 items on my Kindle. OK, many of them are samples, lots of them are books I’ve read, but the rest are all books I own and have not read yet or I read part of and abandoned because the sample promised something the book couldn’t deliver. The other day I wanted to sample a mystery a friend told me about, and I would swear to you I have never heard the title or the author ever before in my life, and when I plugged it into the search field, it came up with the description and a note that said, “You already own this book.” Huh. Really?
So, Kindle readers, how do you keep track of your Kindle books?
What I am reading right now:
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (hardback)—Oh, I am in love with this book! It’s a big fat one, over 600 pages, and I’m halfway through and I don’t ever want to finish because what can I possibly read next that will make me as happy?
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (Kindle)—I just stumbled onto this one and was drawn to sample it because I once read the first few pages of his first book, Peace Like a River, and was so charmed I promptly put it on my TBR list—and forgot about it. The characters are quirky and the language lyrical.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (audio, read by the wonderful J.K. Simmons)—I laugh out loud with the narrator, a curmudgeonly man, sour and pessimistic and a complete pain in the ass to everyone—and I am surprised at how much I am enjoying the story. I wouldn’t have picked it up if my pal Marilyn Jeanne had not told me about it. Thanks, Marilyn.
What are you reading right now?
I love having books around and yes we can always use shelves. I love reading in my purple velvet chair or in bed. I prefer real books as I spend most of my days on the computer so I want to get away from a digital devise.
My fantasy reading place (indoors) would be a window that is inset with a cushioned place to sit, preferably on the second floor next to a wide tree, so I could look up from my book occasionally and notice the leaves in the tree or a squirrel or bird. But I also love reading outdoors--on the deck of my cabin (when it's warm enough and the winds aren't blowing) or next to a lake or even ocean, if one's handy.
I'm reading "In Love with the World," by Mingyur, Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher's tale of leaving his monastery and traveling alone through India, begging for food and encountering many difficulties. It's a classic story of a Buddhist journey.