BOOKS

My faithful readers (What does that mean? Are unfaithful readers people who read other blogs or something?) will have gathered that I am a somewhat eccentric person. This is no accident. I have been working for years to become eccentric. It started when I was a child. I used to drive my parents and teachers wild by being different. Today’s nonconformist young whippersnapper don’t now how to be eccentric. They dye their hair blue, put rings in their eyebrows and think that’s a big deal. Hah! Eccentricity is a subtle art. To be eccentric is to be slightly strange, not out and out whacko. As a kid I would button my shirt all the way up to my neck. While all the other students drew birds facing left, I drew them facing right. For goodness sake, I even celebrated Beethoven’s Birthday complete with a cake and non-stop music.

Books are now at the heart of eccentricity. Now, this sounds quite normal. Many people have a few shelves of books. I have more than a few shelves. I have walls filled with book cases–the living room, both bedrooms, and now the hallway. There aren’t any in the dining room. I’m saving the seven feet of wall space there for the books that will someday have to be moved from my church office. I seldom realize how odd this is until I walk into a bookless person’s home or until they walk into mine. “Look at all the books,” they exclaim. ”Have you read them all?” No, I haven’t. Some are reference works, some are cook books, and some are good things that someday I may get around to reading. Doing a quick check of a few book cases, I find I have read every book on some shelves, on others about half and on still others–the ones with important works of American fiction–only a few. I bought a bunch of Hemingway and Fitzgerald before I realized that I didn’t really care for them. On the other hand, I have read everything by Herman Hesse and Christopher Isherwood and Robertson Davies that I have bought as well as all the mystery books.

I don’t know how many books I have, perhaps 3,500 to 4,000 at home and maybe another 2,500 to 3,000 at church. I had been aiming at a library of about 6,000 volumes by the time I am 65, so I’ll have to do some thinning out.

The books are eclectic. (That’s eclectic NOT eccentric. I’m eccentric, not my books.) They follow changes in my interests. The older ones are on music, then lots and lots of Biblical studies church history with a smattering of theology, then philosophy, then a few adult and higher education text books, then spirituality, then Benedictiana Across the board in terms of age are books on history, art, architecture, literature and children’s books. I buy more children’s books than serious literature. It’s easier to read and doesn’t tax my brain as much. I must have at least 12 editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

I should remark that I rarely pay full price for any book. I try to buy ones I must have at a discount. I haunt used book stores wherever I go. And I always look through sale books. Lot of the sale books are serendipitous; I’m not looking for anything in particular, but find something that appears interesting at a price I can afford.

This brings me to my most recent addition The Book on the Book Shelf by Henry Petroski. That’s a very clever title, because the subject matter of the book is bookshelves. I’ve seen books on the history of books and book making, but this is the only one I’ve ever seen on bookshelves. I first saw it when it was new in 1999. I glanced at it then, but didn’t buy it. Only now as a $2 remainder copy did I purchase and read it–290 pages in about three days. It was a fascinating read. Petroski is professor of both civil engineering and history at Duke University. He looks at technical aspects of shelves and their history while tossing in personal anecdotes and stories along with pictures. (The picture at the head of this blog is of the library at St. John’s College, Cambridge. It’s from p. 90 of the book). I knew that in the middle ages books were chained to the shelves to prevent theft, but I didn’t realize that they were shelved with the spine facing in. So many things to lean. So many books to read.

I am not alone in this particular eccentricity. Remember the clerk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?


A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For him was lever have at his bedde heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.

That clerk was on a pilgrimage to Canterbury which makes him a spiritual ancestor of mine, for as I say, life is a pilgrimage and I am just a pilgrim on the way, even if my baggage does include a few (thousand) books or so.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne