June 17th, 2010
You would think being around 1.2 million books four days a week might blunt the desire to buy books all the time. At the very least, I should be able to tell myself that I can get the books that I want any time. But that’s not how my mind works. Growing up in Glenmont, Ohio, far from a bookstore and not that close to a library means that I have become a book hoarder. Living in close proximity to Chamblin’s Bookmine for the past several years has helped me to let go of books that I have already read, but it hasn’t done much to stop me from collecting more.
I have a night stand that is a small bookshelf. I have a habit of keeping a variety of books near my bed. I thought that a shelf to put them on would keep them tidy and off the floor. I was right about the off the floor part. I still jam in as many as I can. I also have an increasingly wobbly stack on top of the book case.
Right now, I’m reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson. (meh)
On top of the end table:
New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age by Rebecca Edwards
The Collector by John Fowles
Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
Madam Blavatsky’s Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America by Peter Washington
Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg
A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
On the shelf:
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
Eleanor of Aquitaine by Marion Meade
Victorian People and Ideas by Richard D. Altick
The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction by Dale Bailey
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Mitford
The Years With Ross by James Thurber
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade
Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell by Darden Asbury Pyron
H.P.B.: The Extraordinary Life & Influence of Helena Blavatsky Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement by Sylvia Cranston
With the exception of The Blue Sword, Waking the Moon, and Watership Down, I have never read these books before. Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Rape of Europa, Savage Beauty, and The Years With Ross have been on that shelf for over a year. I will read them, damn it.
I keep buying more books. Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves, Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers by Dea Birkett, and The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers by Tom Standage haven’t made it to the night stand system yet.
Some day, my withered corpse will be found underneath a pile of unread books. My only regret will be that I hadn’t gotten to them yet. If anything, working at the bookstore is only making it worse. And no, that’s not Louise Brooks’ autobiography hidden behind my back.