On Reading and (Especially) Book Collecting

Reading and the books I read are often on my mind. What follows is a summary of my doctoral dissertation on books and reading. Keep in mind, it is only a summation, so there’s only so much wisdom I can pack into these few words.

1. The controversy over how much (if at all) to mark up books tires me.  Just conform to what I think is right and you’ll be fine. I’m joking. It’s an entirely personal matter.  Just with one provisio, only mark your own books. And try to avoid obnoxious marking, mainly because if it is obnoxious enough, chances are it will bother you eventually.

On marking and the care and feeding of your books, do what comes naturally. Don’t water them too much.  Pamper them, but not at the expense of not using them.  Being too cautious will likely cause you to avoid good, messy times to read your book (like on the beach or what not).  When I read at the beach, I always think: this book is  going to getting wrecked. However, then I consider this: Who cares! It will get read. A read book has had a happy, satisfying life. An unread book’s hope has been defferred so long, that it loses hope. Obviously, its good to keep them in as good shape as possible, but also remember that they are not trading cards in plastic sleeves, reading will always be sort of rough on your books (which is a good case for making books with GOOD bindings).

2. Avoid the temptation to excessively re-shelf. Just read your books, and look the books sort their own selves.. they are usually far easier to find than you think (provided they aren’t packed up in boxes.  Resist the urge to re-shelf–at least once you have  that…elusive…perfect…setup…

3. Lend books to your friends, but tie them to a leash. I mean the books, or perhaps the friends as well, if the book is precious and the friend is a swindler. I suggest keeping a list of what you have lent out and to who. Marking your name in your books is also helpful in this regard, because it is genuinely easy to borrow a book and then lose it among ones collection (plus, marking can have some neat historical applications as well).  Also don’t be so worried about your books that you never lend to others.  Sure, you should shun people who have a strong reputation of destroying, losing, or never returning books… but on the other hand, don’t be so afraid to lend out your books, they are of age, they can answer and fend for themselves.

4. Where should one read? To borrow from Doctor Seuss… In a house or with a mouse or in a box or with a fox. Somewhere quiet, close to a notepad and a pen, with good lighting is best.  Its a good idea to have a book with you wherever you go, for you never know where you will have to wait or kill some time (not that reading is really killing time, but I digress).  You might want to also pay attention to how alert you are. After working a long day, I’ve had many a book come crashing down from my hands about 5 times in 10 minutes before I realized it probably wasn’t the best time to attempt to read.

5. Use LibraryThing. If you don’t know what that is, find out. Besides all its other neat features and advantages, it is actually quite useful  in some of the things I’m discussing here. It has useful applications for reading and book collecting.

6. Give away and get rid of as many books as you can without feeling like you’ve been amputated.  Always read with an eye towards the question: Is this worth keeping? That will help you and make the decision to give a book away less arbitrary.   Unless you are exceptionally well-endowed in the shelf-space department, space is limited..you need to make room  for books you want. You don’t want too much unwanted baggage. You can  sell them, give them to friends, or use a book trading service such as BookMooch or TitleTrader (I recommend the former). A lively collection grows, shrinks, changes, evolves. Let your collection evolve a bit. There is something soothing to the soul about letting go of a book that needs to be let go of.   It’s sort of like sending off a contentious salesperson, only without the guilt or the complementary pen. But you should consider never giving away a book that you haven’t read through. I’m all for giving away books, but this is where I draw the line, at least give it a solid try before you cast it off forever. This advice is particularly solid for those books which contain $1000 bills on page 394.

7. Don’t  let the taste of the day radically alter your library, you may be disappointed. But do let your changing tastes have a gentle influence on your collection. Otherwise it will become a bore to you.

8. How does one decide what to buy and which book to read next? There are several methods, choose one and find one that works. I suggest prioritizing the following methods of deciding (not necessarily in this order): recommendations from friends, books you’ve heard about on the radio or podcasts, books you’ve seen in the reference list or footnotes of books you really like, etc. LibraryThing also has a fantastic “suggester” feature which can help you greatly in this matter.  When you have a library full of books and don’t know what to read next, could I perhaps suggest a random selection?  Using a random selection will space out your reading, so you aren’t always picking from the same genre or from your current taste.  Sometimes you just gotta swallow some of those books that aren’t so appealing, and a random selection helps in that fashion. LibraryThing is a potential way to facilitate such a random selection.

9. I’ve learned that reading broadly is not always the same thing as reading many genres.  One can read broadly within one genre, and another can read narrowly within many genres. If you want to broaden your horizons, pay careful attention to what eras you are reading from and what style of works your are selecting–I’m talking about the sort of stylistic nuances which can sometimes transcend genre.  Also, don’t be afraid about specializing a bit, its a good thing, especially if you have an academic specialty, a vocational calling, or have a particular practical issue you are working through.  Just don’t be afraid to weave one areas interests into another, and find new applications to what you are interested in other unexpected genres and areas.

10. While I’m all for marking, I find that the following is very handy and might cut down the amount of marking required: Just keep a small notepad where you tend to read. This can also help you become a more focused reader. If you find a rabbit trail (ie. the mention of a person you are curious, a word you would like to look up, or a reference to another book), do not go down it while you are reading. Just mark all such things in the notepad, and then at a more convenient time look up these references. This will help you to focus more on the task at hand–reading while it still ensures that you actually remember these rabbit trails you’ve avoided for future use. This notepad is also a useful place to make notes for future reviews you may write.

11. You may have to bribe yourself into reading more books. Set some ratio  to regulate your “reading to buying” ratio. For example, require that you  complete 3 books for every 1 you order.  Or just fast from buying for a while. Otherwise, if you are bibliophile  with a significant supply of cash, you will NEVER NEVER NEVER catch up. You will be stuffing more eggs into your nest than you can ever possibly  hatch, and the older you get the more menacing the pile will become.

12. Keep track of what you read. I do this on LibraryThing by putting a book in my “Read” collection.  This is a very convenient way to do it. This does have the disadvantage of not keeping track of when I read the book (LibraryThing shows when you’ve added a book, but not when you’ve made a change to its information). I wish I had records of that, but there are ways to indicate that in the notes as well. If you want to be old fashioned, you could just use a old-fashioned notepad for this purpose.  You may also wish to indicate, at this point, which books you wish to re-read at some point in time.

13. Try not to start reading too many books at a time.  As the Wise Solomon said, too much honey is a bad thing,  Everyone has a different tolerance for keeping focused on many books at a time, so find out yours and stay below it. Keep a pool of them, and swap in new new ones as you finish books in order to keep it consistently at about that number. If you are unsure of that number try 2-3. I think that mixing up the genres and keeping things diverse will probably enable you to handle more at a time.

14. Never keep your best books. Always give them away to Mark. He will take real good care of them.

15. Never buy a new book shelf, it is giving way into temptation.

16. Rule #11 is NOT retroactively applicable.