Books

I just splurged almost forty bucks on two new books, both of them Spanish translations of novels written respectively in Swedish and English.  They are "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest", the last and thickest volume of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson and "House Rules" by Jodi Picoult.  The titles in Spanish are, respectively, "La reina en el palacio de las corrientes de aire", or translated literally, "The Queen of the Draughty Palace."  "House Rules" translates directly as "Las normas de la casa."  I know I can afford the books and as I mentioned to the staff person who waited on me at Chapters I have been building my library for the past fourteen years.  They are both very thick books, averaging around eight hundred pages each.  I have a particular reason for favouring big books in Spanish.  They last longer while reading them thus sparing me the need of having to look too soon for new books.  The availability of Spanish books here in Vancouver is quite limited.  Almost all the second hand book stores where I used to buy them have closed down as well as the only Spanish book store in town.  Apart from a modest selection at Chapters and just two or three in the Book Warehouse I have to wait for my annual trip to Mexico City if I expect to buy more books in Spanish.  While Mexico City is full of many wonderful book stores--and a lot of them have good restaurants or fine cafes in them--, books are heavy to carry back with me to Canada so I have to limit my selection. 
     For this reason I prefer big books.  This is becoming a bit of a good thing.  I must have now almost one hundred books in Spanish cramming my little apartment that I haven't read yet.  I am sure that I should be good till my retirement in seven years and longer.  Along with my English books, which I also read by the way, I have probably around five hundred twenty books altogether minus the twenty or so that I have just given away to my Spanish conversation group.
     Building a library has been a quiet and nonstop passion to me for the past one and a half decades.  When I was homeless in 1998 I gave up most of my books, but for my bird books and a few cherished tomes I could still carry with me.  In 2000 I, living in a tiny room in a shared house,  found by the roadside a small book shelf which I brought home with me, determined to fill it with books.  I was still very poor then.  I found books everywhere.  Sometimes left in a box for free on the sidewalk or in the many second hand bookstores that still flourished here.  Every volume I purchased or found had a new home with me and I cherished it like a lost kitten.
     In 2002 I found my current apartment, where I still live twelve years later.  For five years there was a lovely second hand book store across the street from me, with a huge selection of very reasonably (cheaply) priced books and even an impressive selection of books in Spanish in the basement.  One of their features I loved was a wooden barrel on the sidewalk in front overflowing with cheap paperbacks going for twenty-five cents a pop.  In 2007 they moved across the bridge to Broadway and Granville.  I still shopped there but not as often.  They closed over a year ago and a dollar store stands in their place, much as a sweatshop factory outlet has replaced the Book Warehouse on Davie Street, which is for lease again and who knows what is going to open there next.  A book store?  Oh, what a dreamer I am.
     Four tall book cases here in my little bachelor unit lean and groan beneath the weight of books.  in the space above my upper kitchen cupboard I have a full set of World Book Encyclopaedias with annual supplements, vintage 1971.  In 2004 I bought them in a second hand store downstairs from my building for thirty-five dollars.  My reason?  Not really for the information since they were obviously dated and the material biased, but from a sense of nostalgia for my lost childhood when my family had a 1966 set of World Book.  I sometimes look at them and read some of the articles with a mixture of nostalgia, curiosity and ironic good humour for these books are a window into the time I lived as a young teenager.  I am also holding out in hope that eventually well-preserved encyclopaedia sets are going to have a vintage value and will one day be valued as collectors' items.  I might have to wait till I'm ninety before I can get a decent price for them but till then I am holding on to my encyclopaedias.
     I love having my own library.  I intentionally buy books far faster than I can read them.  I want them to be here at hand for me to browse at random as though I am visiting the library or a book store.  It is lovely and special being able to reach for any one of hundreds of books I either haven't read or haven't finished reading or would love to look at again as a way to pass the time on a quiet evening or Sunday afternoon.  Especially in this age of Kindle and E Books I hope to live out my senior years surrounded by real paper and ink books.  You see, I don't like looking too long at terminal screens.  Perhaps I'm old fashioned but somehow it doesn't seem healthy or good for the eyes to be looking for long periods at a lit screen and recent research indicates that this is true.  The books, visible from their shelves are like friends and somehow seeing them there and being able to read them is like being among friends.  I also have twenty beautifully illustrated bird books which have been invaluable for informing my art.
     I know that accruing so many books in a small living space is a bit impractical and that when I move it is going to a royal pain in the heiny packing and moving them, but I will look at this as a noble sacrifice.  If I don't buy or pick up any new books for another twenty years there will likely still be books on my shelves that I have not read.  I am still going to continue buying them, but not as many as before.
     I will close with this lovely anecdote.  When I became homeless I lost some pieces very precious to me.  One is a book of North American birds that my mother bought for me when I was eleven.  The other is a book of the writings of English Christian Medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich, "Revelations of Divine Love."  A friend of mine found Julian of Norwich in a second hand store, bought it and returned it to me.  The bird book I re-encountered in an antiquarian bookstore.  The owner said he had somehow obtained it from the owner of the bookstore where I had dropped off the biggest pile from my previous library.  I bought the book and when I brought it home I positively wept in a sense of relief, shame, grief, joy and ecstasy.