3.27.2023 – books are like jello

books are like jello
there is always room for more
and I can’t change that

I am at this point in my life where I am trying to divest myself of earthly belongings.

For me, for the most part, that means one thing.

Books.

My first job out of high school was in a bookstore.

I stayed with that bookstore as a bookseller, assistant manager and manager up to a custom guy-in-charge name tag that got me trouble.

From the bookstore, I went to work for the libraries.

I word it like that as I was the only person on the staff of both the Grand Rapids Public Library and the Kent County Public Library at the same time.

Together it kind made up for one full time job.

From the libraries I went to work for a publisher.

At the publisher I learned HTML that I turned into a job in the online news business.

Always working with words.

Always looking for books.

Always reading.

Always acquiring more and more books.

Books, for me, were like jello and there was always room for more.

While there might be room for even more, I had quite the personal library.

I claimed I could pick any book off my shelf and not only tell you what the book was about, but I how I GOT THE BOOK.

All those phrases you hear when someone describes their personal book collection and their relationship to those books, well, I said them.

Then I started moving.

First I just moved around to different locations in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I lived.

Each time I moved, there were more books to move.

And I moved them.

Thinking all the time of the old joke of the movers and the old lady with all the books.

The movers finally ask why she didn’t read them before she moved.

Then came the move to Atlanta.

I made some hard choices and selected maybe my favorite, got to have, 500 books or so.

About 3000 were left behind.

Then once we down here in the southland, there came the move into an apartment.

I think I went down to my got-to-have top 100 books.

I was choosing favorite authors.

The books of Jim Harrison, CS Forester and Bruce Catton all made the cut along with some favorites and a few other books kept for sentimental reasons.

I was down to 6 shelves of books.

What with e books and e readers and e check out at libraries there weren’t any other books I felt I would need.

I can get almost anything ever printed anywhere in front of my eyes so I was good.

But I keep going to bookstores.

I keep going to places with books for sale.

Regardless of any and all changes in space and place in my life, this voice inside me tells me there is always room for more books.

Why can’t I learn.

But then what would I learn?

That books aren’t like jello?

There isn’t always room for more?

I know that’s a lie so I can’t get myself to even say it let alone believe it.

Books are like jello and there always room for more and I can’t change that.

This is where I was mentally last Saturday.

My wife and I went to the Beaufort County Library.

And, doggone it, right inside the front door are the books cases for the Friends of the Library sale.

Walk on past, you say.

Well, easier said than done.

And besides no harm no foul, I rarely see anything on these shelves that I have to have.

Most of the time.

Then I saw them.

The multi volume set of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil.

In mint condition.

Like new if maybe not, new.

For sure never read after someone got the set as a gift, I am sure.

I looked at the set for a minute.

I picked one up.

In that moment I experienced nothing less that pure unadulterated covetness.

I had to own it.

The volume had a red dot sticker on the spine.

I looked at the sign.

Red Dot books were $1.

So I know what you are thinking.

What’s the big deal?

Admit it.

That is what you are thinking.

Mr. Foote’s History of the Civil War is in three volumes so we are talking three large paperback books and three bucks.

Big deal.

Well …

See …

This was the special illustrated edition.

This was the special illustrated edition of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil War.

This was the special illustrated edition of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil War in 14 hard cover volumes.

Why did I need these books?

Who in their right mind needs these books?

I guess that’s where I lost the argument as no one would ever say I am ever in a right mind.

I just can’t help myself.

But I showed restraint.

I put the book back down on the stack.

That beautiful stack of beautiful books.

Don’t need them, I said to myself.

Then myself says to me … YOU ARE GOING TO ARGUE OVER $14?

And how could I argue with that.

Maybe it was that it was the complete set of all 14 books.

I had seen this set before in a used bookstore but with only 12 of the 14.

Now all 14 were in front of me.

When I think of complete sets of books like this I always think of the Alfred Hitchcock movie Read Window with Jimmy Stewart.

I think of the line when Stewarts friend the cop describes what would happen if he went before a Judge with a case based on Stewart’s version of what happened.

The cop tells Stewart, “… He’d throw the New York State Penal Code right in my face … and it’s six volumes.”

Anyway my wife comes up and asks if I found anything.

“Well,” I said, “pointing, this set …”

“THIS SET!”, she says.

Where are going to put that was her first thought.

Her second thought was to ask if the Friends of the Library took a debit card.

When we were told no they did not, my wife says maybe if they will hold them until Monday, she will get some cash when she is out and about.

My dear wife.

It really is nice when your wife is also your best friend.

I just got back from the library.

Long story short, I have to find a place to put these 14 books.

They will fit in somewhere.

Books are like jello.

There is always room for more.