From Cup of Chicha:
My moods, their ups and downs, become obvious when I look at my changing relationship to books. At my best, I’m reading them. At my worst, I’m avoiding them. Usually, depressed but optimistic, I’m buying them; I can easily mistake buying them for possessing them, assign their physical presence intellectual effects. It’s a parody of consumerism, or maybe consumerism perfected: I’ve turned the self-as-art of dandyism into a self-as-acquisitions. And, of course, this is the fake change that depressives love best.
Someone commented on Chicha’s post, “Omigod. You are terrifying. 12 years of therapy in two sentences. Where should I send the check?” I chuckled over that. Chicha has eerily summed up my own relationship to books. Over the years I’ve tried to manage my soft addiction to acquiring and reading books. They represent potential, knowledge, the illusion of finding the answer. I once kept a cartoon taped to my desk which depicted a man reading urgently in a library, sweating and looking stressed, while the books in the stacks whispered and mocked, “Haha! You’ll never read us all!” “There are too many of us. Hurry! Read faster!” I kept it to remind myself of the futility of trying to learn everything and to laugh at myself a bit.
When I moved to Austin from Syracuse, I owned six bookcases, each six feet tall, all double-shelved with books. (It probably didn’t help that I worked in a library for ten years.) It wasn’t feasible to ship them all, so I selected the ones most important to me (favored authors, childhood gifts, etc.) and sold the rest for a song to a bookseller (it was a crime, that). In the first three years here, I was judicious about purchases. Then Amazon.com arrived on the scene in 1997. It took just one puff purchase. Since I was in graduate school, though, I only bought what I could keep up with in addition to the required reading.
However, that tune changed after graduation, when I began purchasing books to “build my professional library” with rapidity. I own slightly over 700 books. Last year I read 50 books; at that rate, without acquiring another book, I’ve got enough reading for three years. In fact, it wasn’t until I downloaded a program to catalog my collection that I realized this. That, plus auditing my expenditures in the past year and noting how much I’d spent on books and magazines, told me I need to curtail this habit.
What struck me most was Chicha’s observation that self-as-acquisitions, for book owners, provides the false sense that one is changing, growing. I know it’s far easier for me to buy book after book on a topic of interest than it is to immerse myself in them. Time is wasted in the pursuit, and I end up learning nothing. I become a person who has books about religion, psychology, etc., rather than a person who has knowledge about them.
Kathryn,
I am looking in a mirror. One of my favorite sayings is “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” by Desiderius Erasmus. I buy books for the same reason I bookmark interesting web pages, to remember thoughts, ideas, experiences. I found that books take up a lot of space and cost too much money. So now I just add them to my Amazon wishlist. After a while they go out of print or my interest changes a lot and I delete them. One thing is certain, buying a book about running and taking up running are NOT the same thing. 🙂
Hi Kathryn,
I know the syndrome well! I probably own somewhere in the vicinity of 700 books too (let’s see, 4 1/2 bookcases, 40 books a shelf, 5 short piles on the floor…). I still buy more books, but I also get rid of tons of books every year. Have to as I promised myself I would not buy another bookcase. Getting ready for another purge soon. Point taken tho’, if you keep a book long enough, chances are you’ll outgrow it. But I’ll never outgrow my love for books!
Who are you and what are you doing with my life? 😉
So glad I’m not alone in this! 🙂
I actually have a thermal coffee mug with the Erasmus quote. I like the idea of using the Amazon list to keep track of interests. In fact I did that, putting on the list all the prize-winning authors from all the major contests (Pulitzer, Booker, etc.). My wishlist was 8 pages long! Eventually I got tired of such a big list and weeded out most of it. I also bought the titles I could find used that were priced under three dollars. (Of course.)
What helped me (before Amazon) from over-buying was remembering 1) the huge loss of books and money when I moved and 2) that I never re-read a book, and often it just represents a “notch on my belt.” I also don’t like to part with them. Since Amazon my rate of acquisition has kept up with my craving but not my reality. It has helped that I’ve got this software program that enables me to keep track of what I’ve read.
I’m a huge advocate of public libraries as well. It’s ironic I don’t use mine more. Part of this pertains to the fact that they don’t loan out books for more than two weeks (I know I can renew but sometimes I lose track), I can’t mark them up, and I always tell myself I might need it later very quickly, and a trip to the library would be a delay. This begs the question asking what idea is so urgent that it cannot wait for a trip to the library. 🙂