Books, Books and MORE Books!!!

I've never been known for doing anything by halves. Demi-quarters perhaps, but never by halves. So I ran out of reading (not really, but I always think I do) about a week ago, and immediately, upon a walk with a friend decided, that I simply HAD to have a copy of Anne Somerset's ELIZABETH I. Well, why not? It was well received, and as much as I know about good Queen Bess, I didn't actually own a biography of her, so I thought, "It's on sale, pourquoi pas?"

PAR CE-QUE, (as I realized upon entering my library-esque wee domicile) I have more books than cooking ware. I have more books than clothes and furniture combined!!! If I were to get hit by a getaway tamale wagon tomorrow, all my family and friends would find left of me would be books.

"Gee," they'd say, "He must have really liked to read."
"Too bad he wasn't so good at domestic chores." another would chime in grimly, "Look at those dishes!"

Nevertheless, it's true. I am not a domestic god of the first order, that much is clear. Actually, I'm not a domestic god of any order, at least not one that would admit me as a member. But I do love books. I love the touch and look of them, and seeing them all crowded into my bookcases gives me a feeling of serenity and security few other things do. I love libraries for the same reason. They are architectural masterpieces of learning, and should be hallowed I think, far beyond any and all places of worship. It is no small wonder that it is said that Plutarch wept when he heard the Great Library at Alexandria had been ransacked and burned by Caesar's occupying forces. All the knowledge of the ancient world was stored there, or so it was believed. Who wouldn't weep?

Books do, in many ways feel more real to me than the outside world. Aside from my family, they were the earliest figures which would inform me of the life I would someday lead, or hope to lead, far beyond the environs in which I grew up. Books informed me of unknown lands and worlds, of lives wrote large and lost, possibility and betrayal, damnation and redemption. They kept me sane through a tumultuous adolescence, and gave me figures, both real and imaginary whom I kept close to my heart as role models and hopeful avatars. They informed my secret being, and kept my internal world that I told no one of, alive and full of hope. These tomes fed my soul and were as real to me, and as necessary to my well-being in the real world as oxygen was.

So now I look around my little apartment, surrounded by them, and I wonder, what in God's name do I buy more for? Good heavens, I haven't even read all of the ones I have. I mean, really, it's ludicrous; in addition to ELIZABETH, I have one, two, three, four, no, maybe five books on Christopher Marlowe I have to read, (research for a play I'm thinking of writing) several books by, (including a biography of) Katherine Anne Porter, and if that weren't enough, I have also LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL, by Thomas Wolfe, which I'm two-thirds of the way through now. And as usual, I'm reading two or three at once.

It's not that I don't find them all interesting, it's just that somedays, I don't feel like hearing South Carolina accents in fits of liquor-ridden madness, or I grow weary of hearing of yet another intrigue in Elizabeth's many varied court, or I just want to laugh instead of being appalled. So I switch. Books are like extended lunchdates with various suitors one imagines, some are delightful at times, at other times, tiresome. If one varies the company, one never grows bored. That's what books are like for me. An endless recourse to the universe; always changing and never (unless it's a bad book) stalled. Rather what life should be like.

I'll likely sigh and wonder (in this coming week off) what on earth I'm doing with them all, when I go to dust the shelves and try and set them all in order. I may cull through them mercilessly and try and get rid of the ones I don't want, to make room for the new, because as sure as gun's iron, I'll be out there before long, gasping aloud at some new treasure I didn't know existed, and saying to myself, "Plutarch's Lives??!? In HARDCOVER? With illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley?!? I just HAVE to have it!!!"

Sigh. So you see? It's a vicious cycle.