Red Cedar

I am greedy for books right now. Obsessive, grasping, conjuring up lists of things I want to have read. It’s not enough that I could read them in the future, I want them now. A vibration, a titillation when I look at book lists or walk into a book store. I want to have read them all, I can’t stand that thought that there is so much good I haven’t read. I don’t want to wait. I can’t read fast enough. It’s a little overwhelming, but it’s a familiar feeling and I know it passes eventually.

I’m not sure what causes it, because my consumptive desires are generally minimal – but books are the exception, triggering my “need to possess” instincts like no other material good. I currently have a long “wish list” hampered only by the large stack that needs to be read before I acquire more. It’s not enough to just borrow books (though I do), acquisition for the shelves is a large part of the pleasure – especially if the books carry an aesthetic on top of their literary pleasure. (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern comes to mind here – having elevated the book fetish to a whole new level with their ever-changing publication designs.)

Despite the fact I was hyperactive, books formed a major part of my childhood and adolescence (I was a precocious reader – always far ahead of my grade level and reading adult fiction by the age of ten). But it wasn’t until I met Gerald who I moved in with at 18 (he was some years older than me, but that’s a digression) that I realized the desire to own a fantastic collection of books. I still clearly remember going to his room at the house on Fairfield road for the first time with its shelves and stacks of books taking up most of the available space. I sat there on the edge of the futon mattress on the floor that night and spent hours looking over the novels and art books and texts on every subject that he had accumulated (mostly through mail order while living as a hermit in Ocean Falls), and I felt then this desire for a collection like that. A collection so beautiful in its diversity – a private library of magical things.

And it wasn’t that I coveted *his* collection, because I never wanted his books despite the fact that I lived in that room with him for ten months, absorbing many of them into me – but I wanted a collection of my own that was just as precious as that.

In those years I was very poor and moved around a lot, but I started my collecting then with cheap second-hand novels – keeping only my favourites while discarding the ones not worth moving. I collected the odd special book as well (editions of Re/Search and a few graphic novels) but they were expensive and far between. And then I started in college and added those texts worth re-reading to the shelf, university too was like that with the addition of political histories and analysis (many of which my ex-husband took when he moved out). From there my interests expand as my income does and in the last several years of a good job I have more than doubled my collection adding more graphic novels, art books, photography manuals, poetry collections, novels, erotic short stories and creative non-fictions.

To look at my bookshelf is to look at stages of my life, my interests and my desires over time – an archeological dig of inner life. Which I suppose is why I like to acquire books rather than simply read them – because they are reminders to me of where I have been more than anything else I own. I am comforted when I look over the shelves and recognize when and where I picked something up and what that book meant to me at the time I first read it. Or the precious gifts I have found or been given of rare editions evoking the lineage of thought each time I thumb through them – how many have absorbed these words before me? The bookshelf is also a way of showing myself to others – proving my history to those who have entered my home for the first time.

I go through stages now of acquisition, sometimes reading a book every two days, and others where I can’t focus on any page no matter how rich the prose. Right now is one of my more frantic periods of reading and coveting more, more, more. Each book to be read and then placed on one of the shelves to be read again or lent should the request arise – many of my friends are glad for this collecting lust I have because it means a great lending library for them. (Incidentally, I got one of the best gifts ever for my birthday which was a custom-engraved stamp with my name on it to tag my books with before lending them out. I am so pleased with it I want to stamp all my books immediately!)

I suppose it’s not something to have guilt over, but just a part of me. It’s nice too that Brian has the same obsessive book collecting habits because I feel less freakish about it – though I worry that we might one day live in a house overwhelmed by bookshelves (worry or delight in the thought of it?) 😉