Monday, June 10, 2019

Books!

Jejak PandaSelamat Membaca Di Blog Kesayangan Anda
bandarq
I've spent the better part of the last couple of weeks unpacking boxes and putting things on shelves. I've concluded that my family owns mostly books. We have ratty, hand-me-down furniture, old furniture, and damaged furniture; we have prints and children's art but no real art, unless it was painted by an uncle or my step-mother; we have really faded carpets we bought at Target about ten years ago. Our television is about twenty years old and it's enormous. Quite simply, we don't buy nice things for ourselves. I have more clothes from Kohl's than from Nordstrom's or anywhere else. Besides food and utilities, we spend our money on education, travel, and books.

The kids themselves have hundreds of books. When we go places, our kids, like everyone else's kids, ask for everything, and we usually say no, because they don't really need that tchotchke thing they'll forget about in an hour and also because my salary has been frozen for four of the last five years and therefore I have no disposable income. But books I always buy. I buy nice books at the UConn Coop and I buy ridiculous books at Stop and Shop. Elsa has a thing for Disney Princess books that make me roll my eyes, but I still let her buy them. Cormac has graduated to really expensive, hard bound nonfiction like the Guinness Book of World Records or Ripley’s Believe It Or Not books, but he's at least old enough to know I can’t buy those every time we go to Stop and Shop. So he keeps a running list that he hauls out at holiday season and around his birthday.

Honestly, though. Each kid has two book shelves in his or her room, and then four big shelves at the bottom of a large book case in the living room of our new house. And Cormac has a Kindle, too! Amy and I have two floor-to-ceiling book cases in the living room, another two in this odd foyer-like space, and a smaller one near the front door. There's a system of shelves that comprises the entire wall of one room in the new office (which doubles as a playroom!), and then we have a wall of shelving in our bedroom, along with another floor-to-ceiling shelf and two smaller ones. And all those shelves are packed to capacity, even though a bunch of older books are packed away in boxes in the garage, and over the last two years we have given away literally hundreds of books. Truckloads, I kid you not. (And this doesn't even include all the books in my office).

We have one whole large book case full of just books in Spanish (Amy's) and another of books translated into English from Spanish (mine), and at least one long shelf of books in Italian (also Amy's). I have one whole book case just dedicated to African and African-American authors. Nineteenth-century American authors. Twentieth-century American authors. Modernist poets. Contemporary poets. Modern novelists. Composition theory. Literary criticism. Religion and mysticism. Erotica. Anthologies. Collections of short stories. Books on baseball. Travel books. Protest literature.

It's like a disease.

Here's an indication of how bad it's gotten generationally. Cormac had his eighth birthday this past September. I told people that he didn't need things but to get him gift certificates to the movies or to a restaurant where we could go with the friend who gave the gift. So most people complied with this request but a couple gave Cormac gift certificates to Target or Toys R Us, and a couple just gave him cash. So one day I took him to the abomination that is the dreaded Buckland Hills Shopping area, but when we went to Toys R Us and Target, Cormac couldn't find anything he wanted. He settled for some art supplies at Target, but was hard pressed to locate toys he really cared for. But we took that cash and went to Barnes and Noble and he was in heaven.

Some day I hope to live in a house with a really cool library or office where there's ample space for books upon books, and of course I don't want to ever have to move from this place. I want lots of shelves, good natural light, a nice big wooden desk, and a good chair. (In my most indulgent fantasies I also throw in a fireplace, a small porch with French doors, and a wet bar, but that's probably asking too much).

No comments:

Post a Comment

My True War Story

Jejak Panda Kembali Bertemu Lagi Di Blog Ini, Silakan Membaca bandar ceme 99 When I was a boy I used to make my father breakfast in bed ever...