My Cabinet of Curiosities

by

Nicki Leone

“Why do you keep books that you’ve already read? What drives you to hold onto a book?”

These questions were posted some time ago to one of my message boards by a woman who, it turned out, was in the middle of moving house and was feeling rather daunted by the sheer amount of stuff she had to pack. One sympathizes.

I, however, had just finished my fifth cup of coffee that morning, so fueled with jittery caffeine-induced inspiration, I tapped out a quick tongue-in-cheek reply:

Pure unadulterated greed.

The same kind of panic about not having anything to read that caused my mother-in-law to fill closets full of toilet paper so she would never, ever have to face running out.

The bookcases act as sound dampeners for the band during practices.

They also mean I don’t have to bother with putting pictures up on the walls.

When the big one hits and Armageddon is upon us, all knowledge will not be lost as long as my living room stays relatively intact.

Books make me happy.

The response received the electronic equivalent of a series of chuckles and a couple grinning emoticons, and the discussion moved on to other topics. My mind, however, did not.  Even several days later the question would echo in my head at odd moments. It is the simplest questions that are the most profound. Actually, the first half of that question, “why do you keep books you have already read?” was an easy one to answer because I may want to read them again. I have always been a little puzzled by people who say they do not re-read books. As if, somehow, knowing what happens in the story means they now know everything the book can tell them. Nobody thinks this about other kinds of art. No one gives me weird looks when I put on my Bob Dylan records or says “but you’ve already heard that song.” No one looks at a family photograph and thinks, “I can give this away; I’ve already seen it.” Clearly, our response to the songs of Bob Dylan or the pictures sitting on our mantle is as much about emotion as it is about information. The same is true of reading. I may spend three, or four, or even six minutes listening to a song (this is Dylan we are talking about, after all), but I spend anywhere between two and twenty hours reading a book. If it is a good one, I will get wrapped up in it. Reading is always a journey of discovery, and if the journey is a happy one, it bears revisiting and repeating.

But why do I have all these books? I own, at last count, nearly 8,000 of them. That may be more than my county branch library. I am not going to be re-reading them all. If I read a book a day it would take me twenty-two years to re-read every one. Not to mention the small fact that owning 8,000 books has not deterred me from buying more when so inclined. And I am so inclined quite a lot. I used to quip to customers in my bookstore that “there are worse vices” than buying too many books. But imagine all my books replaced with something else—frogs, say, or plates with kittens, and the reality of the situation becomes obvious. I am obsessed with books.

I blame my mother. I grew up with the belief that having books was a good thing—a very good thing. My mother took me on weekly trips to the local library and nearly every Christmas and birthday included at least some books among the presents. She approved of the time I spent alone in my room, reading, and never batted an eye when I would stuff my school bags twice as full of books as any other kid in my grade, including more than one I certainly did not need for class. Besides, aren’t all our obsessions ultimately our mothers’ fault?

I have held on to my books with a tenacity that I have not reserved for anything else in my life. I have almost nothing in the house older than a decade. I have a box full of broken jewelry inherited from various relatives. Most of my photographs have been bent, torn, or lost. My clothes last an average of a couple of years before harsh treatment begins to unravel them (the words “hand wash” or “dry clean only” are futile directives). Furniture gets broken or stained or clawed by a succession of cats until it must be thrown away. Even the giant yellow velvet chair that sat by the fireplace in my grandparents’ house for fifty years lasted only four or five when it came into my uncertain care. It is gone now, a victim of mildew I could not be bothered to deal with. Stuff comes and goes in my life. Books, though—they come and they stay. I may not own anything that comes from the house I grew up in, but I have all the books ever given to me as a child. I have hauled them in boxes from dorm room to apartment, from house to house. I have forgotten or deliberately left boxes of things each time I moved, but I have never forgotten a single book. In fact, the thought of losing them makes me cringe. One sure way to make me upset is to suggest that I “get rid of some of the books.”

Why though? So my mother taught me to like books. She also taught me to like apples, but I don’t feel compelled to eat them every day, nor store bushels of them in every room. And it is not, as people sometimes say, that my books are “like my friends.” I hear this a lot from readers—“books are friends I can visit any time.”  Not so for me. I have complicated, give-and-take relationships with my friends (yes, I have friends). They are relationships that have evolved over time as we have both matured. I don’t have that kind of relationship with books—even my favorite ones. It is not give-and-take. The books give and I take, when it suits me. Oh, reading them has certainly changed me, but to the best of my knowledge, I do not appear to have changed any of my books one iota in return. They sit, supremely indifferent, on my bookshelves, and care not a whit whether I shall ever open them again. Not one of them has ever deigned to alter so much as a overblown paragraph, much less a bad ending, in response to my opinion. So if the house were burning down, I would still rescue the people and the cat before I started trying to save the books. I’m pretty sure.

It would be wrenching though, to let them burn. I may not have many photographs, but my entire life is laid out on these shelves for anyone to see. The evidence of my changing interests and inclinations from the ages of four to forty are on display here—the fantasy I liked when I was a kid, the science fiction, the books about dinosaurs, the stories about Ancient Egypt and the fascination with William Blake which became a fascination with the engraving process and eventually a fascination with printing processes. I need only to look at the titles to remember when I read them, why I was interested at the time, and shake my head if I had outgrown that particular topic (so sorry, Anne McCaffrey—the dragons of Pern no longer appeal to me) or revel in the pull, the attraction, I still feel  for others. (I find myself re-reading Sherlock Holmes at least once every year). If I were to lose the books, I may forget what I used to look like.

When I sit down in my living room—my library—and look around at all the books, my first feelings are ones of excitement and joy. I love the promise represented in all these books. The knowledge that is there for the taking, the windows and doors they are into other worlds and other lives. I am curious and interested in things by nature, and these books indulge and encourage that personality quirk.  They are a cabinet of curiosities—my curiosities. So although everything I wrote in my smart-alecky list above was accurate, in the end, only the last reason was the important one:

Books make me happy. That is enough of a reason for me.

Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She supported her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that her college career and attending scholarships and financial aid loans supported her predilection for working as a bookseller. She has been in the book business for over twenty years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki has been a book reviewer for several magazines, her local public radio station and local television stations. She was one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network, and as Managing Editor of BiblioBuffet. Plus, she blogs at Will Read for Food. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of varying numbers of dogs and cats. Contact Nicki.