My favorite activity growing was playing library. My Dad, who traveled a lot for business, always brought us home small presents when he returned from his trips. My two favorite, and most memorable gifts were my black and yellow Oops! pen (I think it was a Parker ballpoint. The yellow body of the pen was covered by the word oops! in various sizes and typefaces) and a changeable date stamp. As a seven year-old these two gifts, together with white cardstock, tape and glue were all I needed to be a real librarian.
Fortunately, I had three younger siblings and parents who encouraged us to read. I remember creating little library cards, carefully measuring and drawing lines on them so that they looked just like those cards that appeared at the backs of the books in the library. I created pockets for the cards and carefully taped or glued them to the back page of all my books. I collected the books from our bedrooms, playroom and anywhere else I could find them, placed them on the painted white plywood bookshelves my Dad built in our basement and my little library was open for business.
Reading, books, libraries and school all melded into one social reality and part of the real world that I felt I was part of, as opposed to the world of childhood that my younger siblings still inhabited. I think, I somehow thought it was my job to enlighten them and speed up their entry into the exciting world of books, reading and learning. So playtime, included me creating lessons on the giant black, or actually greenboard in our basement and checking out library books to my brothers and sister.
This morning a discussion post on the TED: Ideas Worth Sharing LinkedIn group page caught my attention.
Eliana wrote: Are physical books going away? Are they bound for dinosaurism? Do you still read books? Buy books? Or do you read on kindle or pdfs, or some other electronic device?
The thread is 4 days old and to date there are 47 comments which range from the impracticality of storing and caring for a large physical book collection, the convenience of e-readers and the importance of the physicality of the traditional book.
I spend most of my day looking at and working on a computer. I have my four-year old MacBook which is my constant companion, and equally old iMac, an iPad and iPhone. I am comfortable reading and working on a variety of screen sizes, yet given the preference I still want to hold, read and turn the pages of a physical book for serious and engaged reading. The ease of which you can glide from one page to another on an eReader is slick and seductive, however, it still can not compete with moving between pages and passages I have flagged in a physical book, or like now having the piles of books that surround and inspire me as I embark on my writing process.
While I was doing my MA my husband gave me a copy of Tom Raabe's Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction and joked that the reason I loved grad school is that it gave me an excuse to buy books. I know now that he is really just a touch envious that I am working with titles such as C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination, Sarah Pink's Doing Sensory Ethnography, David Harvey's Spaces of Hope, Rojek and Urry's Touring Cultures, Ronald Pelias' A Methodology of the Heart, and John Van Maanen's Tales of the Field; while the books he has on his desk right now include Field Epidemiology and the International Handbook of Survey Methodology. I have to admit that I rarely, okay never, enter his literary scientific world, however, he vicariously enters mine and we share our interest in narrative during our 2 hour commutes to the university, where he drives and I read aloud. Our current commuting book is Pelias' Leaning: A Poetics of Personal Relations.
Christopher Plummer, the Oscar winning veteran actor spoke to Jian Ghomeshi on the July 11, 2012 episode of Q about his life-long love affair with literature and books and how they inspired his auto-biographical one-man show A Word or Two which opens in the Avon Theatre in Stratford today.
Walter Benjamin in his 1931 essay "Unpacking my Library: A Talk about Book Collecting" gives us a glimpse into the intense relationship he had with not only literature but the act of book collecting. Benjamin opens his personal tribute to his library with: "I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. ... Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes ... so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood - ... one of anticipation - which these books arouse in a genuine collector." (Benjamin 1968:59) Benjamin talks about his books as friends, laden with memories that conjure up images of times past, places visited and events that marked his life.
My book collecting is at odds with my personal aesthetic. I love the look and feel of stark minimalist interiors but can not balance this with my need for a life filled with books. I remember reading an interview with architect Daniel Libeskind a number of years ago. He discussed his love of reading, of literature, of books; yet in the accompanying images of his New York City apartment there were no books. He explained that he had the luxury of having his library at his office, only blocks away. While I loved the look of his apartment, I could never live like that as I need my books, they are part of my life, part of who I am.
Books tell stories. Not just the stories contained within their individual pages, but the stories that result from their proximity and distance to the other books they live with and amongst. Perusing the bookshelf of someone else gives you a window into their psyche. It is a visual portrayal of what interests them, or in some cases what they feel they want others to think they are interested in.
For a couple of years I did home staging to help offset the costs of going back to school. Home staging is about creating an environment that potential home buyers want to own. My secret weapons were original works of art, orchids, green apples, matching wood hangers and a well curated library. It never ceased to amaze me when I would walk into a house or apartment and there were no books; and the tremendous difference it made to the feel of the house when I brought in books.
Home staging and teaching at the undergraduate level have opened my eyes to the awareness that a lot of people don't read. It is not that they just don't read books, they don't read - period! I was told by a group of students in a class I taught last term that unless there is an in-class writing assignment tied to a particular reading, they do not do the readings. One student proudly proclaimed that she has managed to get through four years of an undergraduate degree with an 80% average and has never bought, nor read a text book. "I don't like reading. Never have and never will." She proudly and confidently declared. I replied to her that she must be kidding, and looked at the other ten faces sitting around the seminar room table. Another student claimed that she only reads the abstract and discussion section of articles and then only if they are interesting and easily available on-line, another stated that if she can't read it on her iPhone, then obviously it is not worth reading.
I sometimes worry about this and am always saddened when another independent bookstore is forced to close its doors, or when funding restrictions force libraries to shorten their hours or narrow their collections focus. Yet, I am not ready to believe that books will disappear. As we spend more and more time immersed with technology, I believe that most of us still want and crave the tactile, tangible and physical quality of a real book. We want to be able to turn the page, crack the spine, feel the weight of the paper, inhale the smell of new ink or the old leather of a treasured family heirloom. Books hold and create memories, they tell stories and have a life of their own.
Sean Ohlenkamp with his volunteer crew of book lovers created this loving ode to books at Type Books at 883 Queen St W. in Toronto.
The Joy of Books
Sean Ohlenkamp Director, Editor and Cinematographer
Grayson Matthews Music
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