BOOKISHGAL

Another sort of random post today.

I know that the future trend may be toward reading books on a screen (Amazon kindle, anyone?), but I think I’m always going to be one of those who oppose the idea of e-books becoming our main mode of reading. And I’m not even talking about the way all these computer book programs so far are regarding readers simply as “revenue fodder,” and plan to record information about our reading habits so they can “target” us to drag yet more dough out of our pockets. No physical book made of paper has ever yet entered my name and reading habits in any database, or plotted to relieve me of further money after I’d bought it. I’d like to keep things that way.

But what I’m really talking about is the sheer pleasure of holding and owning the book.

The feel of the paper under my fingers, the way I can take the book anywhere, prop it on my lap, stick my finger in the page to flip back to (rather than scroll scroll scroll), stick my fingers in several pages. No physical book has ever lost its battery charge or crashed, in my experience. (And dropping a book in the tub doesn’t involve possible electrocution or the certain necessity of buying a whole new book reader. Just spread the book on a dry surface, and peel the pages apart afterwards. Easy.)

Real books of quality have gorgeous covers - leather, maybe, or embossing or artwork, and expert and creative bindings. The different types of paper lend a wonderful feeling of texture to the visual experience. You can stick a bookmark in, hold the book up edgewise, and think, “I have now passed the middle, and the thickest part of the book is in my left hand. Only half an inch to go.”

But for me, even these things aren’t the best part of owning books. The most special moments come, for me, when I’m feeling really down. And those times don’t even involve reading.

When I’m depressed or gloomy, I often walk into the room with all my bookcases, and just stand there and look. And that very act is comforting. Sometimes I run my hands along the spines of the books. But most of the time I look at the different sections.

There are the fantasy and science fiction books. Then we’ve got the big section of world religions and mythologies. For me, that’s a real biggie. Beyond that one is fiction.

There is the two-shelf language section. The three shelves of philosophy and theology books. A shelf of feminism books, and another of poetry. My special shelf reserved for all of Dorothy Dunnett’s historical fiction (except King Hereafter, which I own but don’t like, so it’s packed away). My other special shelf for the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay. (They do belong together.) The shelf for the Russian novels. History. Politics.

And that half shelf of the earliest Doonesbury comic strip collections!

What makes me feel better, turning around and around and looking at all these books, is just knowing that they’re there, that I could reach out and pick up a Joseph Campbell mythology book if I wanted, or read Hume’s Treatise, or grab Jane Eyre or Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods (wonderful book). They’re there with me, just waiting, like friends from all over the world and all through time.

They represent my own history, too. I can look at a well-worn Del Rey SF paperback and think, “I remember buying that in my second year of university.” I look at my “Poldark” set, and remember those wonderful Sunday evenings in the 70s, when Masterpiece Theatre was running the series and I was so enthralled that I bought all the books. I look at Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly, and remember having to buy it for a course at Syracuse University, and suddenly discovering that I was a feminist.

No file list on a computer screen will ever do that for me.

Books aren’t just computer files. They are living beings with a history, beings that make our own history as we read them and cherish them.

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