What Is It About Books?

What Is it About Books?

It was a dark and stormy night. Wind gusted wildly and lashed the house and roof with rain that sounded like pea gravel shot from a cannon. Small branches and limbs broke from the fir and oak trees around the house and littered the deck and yard with dark, half-seen lumps that could have been bodies or clumps of animated primeval sludge. OK, that’s going a bit far. But it was very dark, very stormy, very wet, and Gary was out of town.

I had planned to do some work in the studio while he was away, but the weather and atmosphere made me seek refuge. What better way to spend such an evening than in a room full of books, nestled into my recliner in a circle of light, cat on my lap and hot drink at my elbow?

Utterly evocative, but full of the pain
of lost libraries and disappeared books .

Even better, the book I was reading was Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night, with a cover illustration of a dark woods and a man in a chair reading a book by lamplight.

But the question in my mind is, what is it about books that is so comforting to some of us? I’m not talking so much about reading – one can read in many types of media. As Manguel reveals in another title - A History of Reading - the methods, entitlements, and habits of reading have changed greatly over the course of written history. The outcry about the “loss of books” to electronic media is misplaced. Electronic media provide reading: printed ink-on-paper books provide a mystique in their sheer physical presence that is not transmitted to cold plastic.

How to explain the feeling you get in a bookshop or a library - public or private - where you are surrounded by printed volumes, of there being something special there for you and you alone? Something waiting for you to find it, or to find you by serendipity. The feeling that makes you say “ahhhhh” when you step into the presence of a room filled with books.

A wonderful book, full of surprises. 

To be sure, there are those who don’t experience this; even those who appear to despise books. I have seen many decorating and interior design books, television shows, and even magazine articles where interior designers can’t bear the thought of colorful spines and dust jackets cluttering up their theme or color scheme. Some go to ridiculous lengths to disguise books, if they must remain in the room. They’ll cover them with plain white wrappers (or worse, paint them!), or place them on the shelves by color and size, or remove the dust jackets to display more uniformly plain spines, or – worst of all – display the books fore-edge out . Lacking the chance to do any of that, they’ll imprison the books behind doors.  It’s an aesthetic, but to booklovers a very wrong-headed and egotistical one.

The people who put themselves into the hands of these designers claim that they want a “warm and inviting” atmosphere. Laying claim to a room in which a gigantic flat-screen television becomes a focal point, they seem happy with the result. One (who loves books) can only wonder how this is possible.

To those of us for whom books are among life’s greatest pleasures, those many-hued dust jacket spines on our own shelves are like the faces of old familiar friends. One glance at such a book and one is reminded of previous pleasures, or taken back to a moment in time fondly remembered, or convinced that there is something more to be learned between those covers. The emotions of previous encounters enter one again, even without touching the book.

Bookshelves in a home speak volumes (literally) about the owner. Entering a home with books for the first time, one gravitates automatically to the shelves, scanning the spines for titles unfamiliar and familiar, deducing mutual or unexpected interests from them.  A home without books seems shallow and cold, lacking somehow in personality.

Those of us with books under our skin cannot imagine a time when electronic versions will suffice. They offer cold comfort at best. The image of sitting alone on a stormy night with the glow of an electronic screen for companionship simply does not convey the sense of safety and warmth as does the alternative picture I painted in my initial paragraphs. Will there be a time when it is enough? Not for me.

Serendipitous Reading

My “serious” reading is often focused on a topic that intrigues me at a given time – currently I rotate between geology, history of books and reading, cookbooks, and various art and artists. Sometimes I’ll get caught up with a certain author and want to read a string of his or her books – recent candidates have been Simon Winchester, Anthony Bourdain, Anne Tyler, and Bill Bryson.

My “potato chip” reading – the light stuff that I read just before turning out the light for the night – is often from some mystery series and usually depends upon my colleagues supplying me with cartons of mass market paperbacks by certain authors or in certain categories (bibliomysteries being a favorite, of course).

In between is a category difficult to name – usually literary fiction or non-fiction. I guess I would call it “intellectually engaging pleasure reading.” This category is generally filled with books acquired through pure serendipity – inexpensive copies picked up at the flea market or yard sales or however, where the investment of a dollar or two is not going to kill me if I try something new and find I don’t like it. This is often the most fun category, for I find myself reading books that I really love but hadn’t heard about. Because in my business I deal primarily with old and antiquarian books, I don’t keep abreast of best seller lists or even book gossip as I once did when selling new books.


What is somewhat odd about this process, though, is that sometimes these books coalesce around certain subjects, be they fiction or non-fiction, and quite often their relationship is not apparent from their titles or obvious subject matter when I pick them up. A few years ago a number of my “serendipity” reads turned out to relate, in one way or another, to the American Civil War. Not to the battles and warfare itself, but to some of the issues that led to, fed, and resulted from that conflict. So books such as The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, by Jane Smiley; John Bailey’s The Lost German Slave Girl: The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans; a biography of Fred Harvey, and a couple of other random picks at the time surprised me by reflecting some Civil War issues between them.

Of course, if books are published within a short time-span you can understand some similarities – author imaginations are stirred, editorial departments are alert to, reader interest is fueled by, whatever issues are in general discussion or investigation at the time.

So it may not be surprising that several of my recent reads by European authors reflect upon the Second World War and subsequent Cold War years – again, not in terms of warfare and battles but more about the human factor and how lives were affected by these events. So consider these brief reviews:

Markus Zusak: The Book Thief. I had no idea what to expect when I snatched up this one to include in some purchases and bring home, but I was very pleased with it. The protagonist (book thief) is a young girl who is fostered by a couple in a town on the outskirts of Munich during WWII. Although illiterate, Lisle Meminger has arrived with a copy of The Grave Digger’s Handbook that she discovered in the snow where her younger brother, who died on the train trip to their new home, was being buried. Her foster father, a likeable accordion player and professional house painter, undertakes to teach Lisle to read, using the Handbook as her first reader. She subsequently steals a book off a Nazi burn pile, and from the library of the town mayor. The life of her adoptive family is complicated when they hide a Jew in the basement where Lisle has taken her reading lessons. Written in a clear prose style that still sometimes borders on poetry, the most surprising element in this book is the narrator. Zusak is an Australian author whose German mother stimulated his interest in this topic with stories from her personal history.


Jim Powell: The Breaking of Eggs. A debut novel by this British author, this one concerns Feliks Zhukovski, a Polish Jew expatriate who took refuge in Paris during the days of Communist idealism. There he has supported himself by publishing a frequently-revised travel guide to Eastern European countries, and has managed somewhat spectacularly to avoid his own history, his family, and change of all sorts. Sometimes this oblivion is quite amusing, in a similar vein to Anne Tyler’s obtuse travel guide writer in The Accidental Tourist.

Of course, by 1991 when the story takes place, the Berlin Wall is gone and Communism has collapsed. Now in his sixties, Feliks is suddenly forced to confront a half-century of personal history. Along the way he finds a long-lost brother and his family, the real story of what happened to his mother, his own unsuspected legacy, and the fact that his idealism obfuscated truth and reality. It is, in a sense, a “coming of age” novel of the second coming – the elderhood that sums up our lives. Feliks not only survives this exposure, he emerges victorious and a good deal more cosmopolitan.

Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses. This novel takes us to a Norwegian riverside cabin with Trond Sander, a sixty-seven year old man who has retired to reflect on his life and perhaps to test himself in this rustic environment where he must learn to fend for himself, often using skills that his father taught him when he was still a teenager. A novel that unfolds in the mind of the protagonist, part of this story is set in the period of World War II where Trond’s father was clearly a member of the resistance, helping to smuggle political prisoners out of the country; and part is in his present, where shadows of the past become solid flesh and blood. There is a good deal of understated passion in this book, and a certain unsentimental poetry. It’s the kind of story you feel in your bones. And, of course, like the last one it’s a late-life “coming of age” story.

Another synchronicity, and I have to wonder if these books appealed because the characters are similar in age to myself.

The Death of the Book as We Know It

Well, there is a lot of doom and gloom among booksellers about the future of the book – meaning the printed codex, of course – with the onslaught of digital reading devices. I saw them as evil incarnate in the beginning, but having listened to many arguments pro and con, I’m now revising some of my preconceptions.

Our thinking about books is somewhat entrenched in the way we have regarded them in the past: As repositories of knowledge and literature, as primary tools for access to information, as objects that we enjoy for their beauty, as means of entertainment. In fact, the only thing really missing from that list in digital format is the tactile aspect – the beauty of fine printing, lovely reproduction of artwork and maps, the feel of paper and cover materials, the smell of a freshly-printed or old book. And it does remain to be seen if digital copies can outlast good old paper and cloth. The technologies seem to move along very rapidly and a lot of things can get left behind and lost.

But when I think about the implications of the progression of technology, the future of the electronic reading device seems to warrant some respectful consideration. We need to realize that the current examples – Kindle, Nook, and the rest – are just baby steps into the possibilities. At some point they will surmount the need to replicate the codex, and take the concept of “book” much further. We already see some applications on the Internet that can be incorporated. If you’re reading about a certain type of music, you can click a link and hear an example. Some e-books already provide dictionaries (I’m always jotting words onto scraps of paper or post-it notes, if handy, and inserting into the book I’m reading to look up later), and they could provide many more layers of research and reference, including videos, 3-D maps and applications, and other scholarly or entertaining aspects.

In the grocery store parking lot the other day we were about to open the rear hatch of the van to load our purchases when a woman walking by spotted my Tomfolio magnetic sign and asked what it was. I explained that Tomfolio is an independent bookseller’s co-op website, and she was excited, declaring herself a “book nut.” I mentioned e-books and she threw up her hands, swearing she would never touch one. “I love my books! They’re MINE! I like to write notes in them. I like to share them with friends. I like to read the notes they write so we can discuss our thoughts about various passages. I want to KEEP them where I can SEE them and TOUCH them!”

The following night we were at a party, and I fell into a lively discussion about books with Mary Lou, another passionate reader. And then she mentioned “Kindle” and I stuck my fingers in my ears and went “neener neener neener” but she made me listen. Her arthritis, she said, made it impossible for her to hold a hardcover book for long, and paperbacks became difficult to hold open. But her Kindle could be propped up for reading without pain for as long as she wished.

About then our party host mentioned his Kindle, and I asked to see it. I admit I had never looked at one before. He has the “Third Generation” (I guess that means something). In response to my questions he showed the dictionary, the ability to make notes and retrieve them as footnotes, and the option to listen rather than read, with a choice of voices even. (I imagined sitting through a boring meeting with the earpiece in, listening surreptitiously to a book being read.) He also had the cover, which incorporates a reading lamp, so the absence of backlighting is not a problem.

I thought about some applications that others have mentioned – frequent travelers can take a “suitcase full” of books along, but all in this small device. Books that are difficult to obtain in certain parts of the world are easily downloaded – without having to pay heavy shipping or customs costs. And so forth.

I may take a look at some of the other devices out there. The Kindle seems unnecessarily restrictive with its proprietary downloads, etc. But I understand that there are some now that will download library books and purchased or free digital texts from a variety of sources.

In other words, it looks as though e-readers could become useful tools. I’m so hardwired into codex reading habits that it would be difficult, I think, to derive the same pleasure from a “tool.” And there are certainly many types of books that would not translate at all. I just received a letterpress-printed calendar and spent five minutes just stroking it. You can’t get that tactile satisfaction from a little plastic box. But there is no denying that the e-reader has a place in the future. I cannot agree that it will replace the printed book altogether, and perhaps not even to a significant degree. It’s going to be an interesting phenomenon to watch, in any case.