Shelf Life

One's personal library is an intimate matter. It takes patience, willingness, and love to cultivate such pieces like War and Peace, The Sun Also Rises and The Sound and the Fury. There is patience--because a library for the literary will never stop growing. The search for the right edition or author is half the fun. Willingness fits in everywhere the reader goes. For example, a personal collection will accumulate as its owner travels, discovers, and seeks new writers. There is a willingness to lug a five pound novel, along with a 30 pound bag of fruitless belongings, from the Outer Sunset in San Francisco to the Berkeley hills in the rain at 11:30 PM. Love is the easiest of all and does not need to be defined.  Those without passion for literary ownership wouldn't see a dusty unofficial copy of Where I was From in the Santa Cruz bookstore, Logos, and carry it 300 miles back home with joy.

I am a lover of books. A personal collection, I believe, is sacred. Though, James Wood of the New Yorker writes quite the opposite in this week's edition. He makes the valid point of collectors who purchase books for its shelf life, without reading them. We all do it. How can we possibly read every single Russian, French, English and American 19th century novel while still allowing time to have a life outside of books? But admiration for these authors is important. Do we really want the internet to take over all print sources? Even for the sake of books we don't get to read start to finish? Though we may not complete each individual book we own, they all remain in a very sacred part of our hearts--as part of the soul.

*Photo taken at the UC Berkeley Social Welfare library by Andrea Dumovich.