Moving on from packing crates . . .
I only have one small area devoted entirely to books, a modest sized bookcase, but it’s the only one of its kind and much more civilized than the leaning tower of packing crates I got by with for years.
It's a jungle in here. Impossible to get a photo without greenery getting in the way.
So you can see, not a lot of books for a book lover. I used to have many, many more, especially back in the day when I had the dangerous occupation of working in a bookshop in downtown Victoria . . . but I’ve managed to pare down. They take up so much room and making another bookcase would be another crazy 100s of hours of work (no Ikea is not the answer, read ‘Cheap’ by Ellen Ruppell Shell, one of my packing crate books, if you don’t already know why) And if books are just sitting there on the shelf with no one reading them, what’s the point? As the Permaculture expression goes, unused resources are pollution. I used to feel a good deal of comfort in being surrounded by books. Now, for the most part, I just see them as clutter like any other, so it’s reference books I tend to hang on to.
But there are things in there I can’t bring myself to get rid of. Books that belonged to my grandfather, grandmother and great-grandmother for example:
This shelf seems to hold all the history
I’ve got the dictionary my grandfather brought with him when he left France in the late 30s. It looks like it’s been around the world, and all across the wild prairie before the comforts of modern travel:
Then there is the poetry book my great-uncle gave to my grandmother when they were young teenagers. Just the thought of a 13-year-old giving his younger sister a book of popular poetry for Christmas seems antiquated. I can’t see that happening these days:
Various textbooks that belonged to my grandmother and her brother. The bottom one, Alberta Public School Arithmetic Book I, 1924, is a bit sobering. It belonged to my great-uncle, and is proof that the Alberta school curriculum, still one of the most thorough in Canada, had slid precipitously downhill by the time I went to school there. The red volume is my favourite: Aesop’s Fables, published in 1884 with “upwards of 200 illustrations” that belonged to my great-grandmother when she was a girl in Ontario.
On the other half of the shelf we have some of the tools that belonged to my husband’s great-grandfather who like him, and his grandfather, was a cabinetmaker. The tools are all in perfect condition and, with the exception of the decidedly non-metric measuring tape, are still pressed into service from time to time.
And the textbooks, and ‘Handbook of Empire Timbers’ that accompany the tools are fascinating. I was just perusing ‘Building Construction: Advanced Course’ “A Text Book On The Details And Principles Of Modern Construction For the Use of Students and Practical Men” London, 1925, and am considering moving it over to the bedside reading packing crate as it is oddly fascinating yet dull as dishwater, perfect for inducing sleep.
Congratulations on your modest book collection. I am still in the midst of a huge reduction. Like you, for years I hoarded and bought, firm in the belief that owning hundreds of books was somehow ok, and somehow not as cluttering and clogging as amassing other ‘stuff’. But yes, still clutter. I have boxes in four different locations at the moment, including much loved favourites from my child hood. Some will have to stay……
I completely agree with you, Fireweed. Most of the books I’ve ever had have passed on or been passed on. Then again, I did used to work in publishing and was lucky enough to receive many free samples, so I had to get rid. The physical book to me is ultimately a receptacle for the sacred knowledge within – not a precious item in itself, though, of course, some books are very beautiful and desirable objets, and I have some which are of such enormous sentimental and personal value, I would never part with them. I am not at all ‘precious’ about books – in our house they come and go quite easily – and I don’t collect them. They just kind of accumulate!
Henrietta – Good luck on the reduction. I hope you get there before you have to move it all yet again in a couple of months’ time. My great-grandmother apparently used to say, bitterly I think, “three moves is as good as a fire.” She moved a lot when they came out west from Ontario and, like you, some of her homes were what we would now call “low impact dwellings,” i.e., sod huts in the middle of the bald prairie. This life was not of her own choosing; she missed her piano, books, dresses, scarves, and fur coats for the rest of her days.
Solitary Walker – It’s true. They just accumulate! Like snow drifts. The promise and possibility that lies between the covers of a book makes them very difficult to resist.
By the way, Henrietta – you might recognize the book in the top photo sandwiched between the two dictionaries, ‘A Corner of England.’ You gave that to us when we moved back to Canada. I won’t be giving that one away.