i love foraging for books at secondhand bookshops more than actually hunting for them. more than simply looking for particular titles, i like browsing whatever they have at the shops, opening books that catch my eye to see what they might reveal to me. and it's more than simply the less prohibitive prices secondhand bookshops offer.
the wonderful thing about secondhand books is that they have stories to tell beyond that which they were originally intended to.
sometimes, it's only in the way a book is worn, which tells you this one has been sitting unread and collecting dust on a shelf for ages, or that that one is constantly being taken down, perhaps packed in luggage to be opened in foreign lands...
sometimes it's something, anything, written on one or more of the pages. sometimes cryptic, such as my favorite one, written in a bold hand on the top of the front page of my copy of Samuel Delaney's The Einstein Intersection: 2.99 F CWW. sometimes mundane, such as the finely scripted note on the top of a page in my Ballantine edition of Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan: check: [number] carpentry apprentice. or mysterious, or even promising, such as the scripted name Roger Zelazny i found on the title page of a paperback copy of Roger Zelazny's Sign of Chaos, which may or may not be an actual autograph. even juvenile attempts at line editing the main body of text, or the circles that mark the discovery by the previous owner of exciting new words, or the notes in the margins, senseless, sensible, legible or otherwise, all these have their own charm.
sometimes it's something you find lost within the book's pages, such as the photograph of a child i found stuck between the pages of T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and a faded airline ticket stub in another book i can no longer remember.
occassionally, it tends towards romantic (not that way, but simply in the way it exhibits a connection between people, producing something that is poignant and sweet), such as the note scribbled beneath the family tree in my Bantam Spectra ed of John Crowley's Little, Big: a note that starts Dear Aunt [name that may or may not be Ivy], continues with a personal message expressing the gift-giver's gratitude and how she will always value her Aunt, and ends with Love, [name that may be Kris or Kim or something else entirely]. The note is dated "Fall 1991", and this is somehow so impossibly appropriate it almost beggars belief.
more than simply collecting books for the books themselves [as my library has grown such that i could never possibly hope to read it all within my lifetime, nor, to be honest, would i really want to], i feel i am taking part in the greater experience of human life, that elusive something that connects all people to all other people, by rescuing these books and the secrets they keep from total anonymity.
also, i like imagining i have grand reasons for the things i do, when really, though i'm hardly a rhyme, i do tend to things without reason.
8 comments:
Ouch. For me, remnants like that are more poignant than anything. i for one have found a short poem by an unknown writer on a piece of paper and a dried leaf of unknown (to me) variety. Both were being used as a bookmark. And of course, my prized piece is my signed hardbound copy of Declare by Tim Powers. In reverse too, which supposedly means something.
In more famous news, there's always fermat's theorem written at the side of his book. ;-)
On the other hand, I can never get myself to notate on my books. Call me a purist but I find it sacrilegious to do so.
For me, remnants like that are more poignant than anything.
absolutely. you wonder about the lives of the people who once held these books in their hands, particularly in cases like my last example; what they're like, how they relate to each other, what prompted them to pass something such as this along to the strange outside world...
on the other hand, the little meaningless nothings and details fill me with wonder as well.
in a way, it gives these books their own lives by giving them other stories to tell than simply what's printed on them. call it a soul, if you will.
if you can find a copy of The Yellow Paperclip with the Purple Spots (a picture book, no less), check it out. it tells a story somewhere along these lines.
On the other hand, I can never get myself to notate on my books. Call me a purist but I find it sacrilegious to do so.
me, i've got a double standard on that count. i can never write on my own books (not even just my name), but if i were to give a book away, or were to receive a book from someone else, i don't mind having something written on the inside. in fact, in some cases, i'd actually prefer it.
incidentally, just found out that Yellow Paperclip made it as a finalist for the national book award.
way to go, Nikki!
i remember staying for hours at the UP main lib* reading those marginal notes that students left on the pages of books. there were entire threads going on in them. on the one hand i knew they were totally fucking with those books. on the other hand i felt these guys were doing me a service--especially if the book happened to be one of those soul-dehydrating, neuron-decimating stuff i had to read for class.
* o.k., let me have it: i was a total nerd without a social life.
and now we have message boards and blog comment boards like this... so we've effectively done away with using the books as a means of communicating in threads...
skinny: Who's the author?
Mmm, there's a story to be written here somewhere. Something bitter-sweet methinks.
paul: Wow, you actually managed to stay in the UP lib? I never did, preferring to go home after class. If you were a nerd, I was the anti-social geek.
bc: oh, i know about the story in all this... it's gestating as we, er, "speak"...but i'm not quite sure it'll be bitter-sweet. do the words "Cthulhu Mythos" ring any bells?
the author of Yellow Paperclip is the astonishingly ebulient Nikki Dy-Liacco. her blog is linked on me sidebar.
banzai cat: yeh, i spent a lot of time at the main lib. still, staying at the lib didn't exactly make me any less antisocial.
but when i started feeling i was outnerding myself, i just ran out to the lib steps and smoked ten thousand cigarettes. but a clincher: i still had a book lying open on my lap. ha, college.
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