Books Worth keeping

 We just had the inside of the house painted and as a result, we're sorting through art, books, keepsakes,  and memorabilia, the flotsam and jetsam of 50 years of marriage and perhaps too long in the same town. Moving from the previous house to this one 16 years ago was only a matter of tossing things in the back of a pickup truck and driving a mile, so there was little winnowing then. Part of the cleanout had been sorting books: keep, throw, or sell. I probably went deeper than necessary because I'm also recovering from knee surgery and sorting books is something I could do stretched out on a bed with ice water massaging my leg joint. 

Though I'm not a bibliophile I do love reading, and that in itself means one's bound to collect books. And unfortunately, I am not a reader who monitors the bestseller list to find my next read. No, quite the opposite. For a writer, it's a shame how I neglect bookstores.  When book shopping, I'm to be found rummaging the stacks at the Ukanuzit, the local thrift store, digging through boxes on the free table at the dump, or looking at cheap offerings at yard sales. They each have their appeal, though, I must admit that the thrift store collection is made up mostly of what didn't sell at yard sales, so a fellow is eating leftovers, figuratively speaking, of course, which means lots of Christian guides to life and self-help books (mostly unread). Fortunately, leftovers can be quite satisfying.

Not being a bibliophile doesn't mean I don't like books, I do. I just don't feel the need to own every book I've read, might read, or should have read. The books I keep (not counting the TBR tower in the bedroom) are books that I care about individually. There's the Kipling collection of poems in the bound red leather whose texture is reminiscent of a child's cheek. Some titles on the shelf are sentimental gifts or the work of fellow writers such as the boxed illustrated Lord of the Rings trilogy my brother gave me decades ago. I find that we are drawn to books much as we are drawn to be people. Some are beautiful and that is enough to make them appealing, others have a heart that touches us so we want to keep them close and are with us so long, that they are parts of us, like the scars, and warts of our aging skin. Some of the books I found on my shelf, I haven't read. In fact, one old tome I found in the collection I've just started reading. The memoir of an ethnographer who spent time in the Canadian Arctic in the 1930s. I don't know where I got it's a good read so far, and it follows well after Canoeing with the Crees, a canoeing adventure from the same time and general region. 

Most of my reading is not purposeful, in fact mostly it's happenstance. I stumble across a title that catches my eye or have one shoved into my hands by Madelyn or a fellow reader. And I read for different reasons. Sometimes I like a good adventure story, true or fiction, and I like to read about places I travel to, not travel books but novels and memoirs from that setting. I'll read a good writer despite the topic, but bad writing won't be tolerated. Not that I'm an expert on good vs bad writing, but I know what I like, and reading good writing makes me a better writer, I hope. 

The best books are ones that have a story or tender memory like the stack of Elmore Leonard novels I found at the Hope Library Bookstore which became part of a fond memory of a camping, hiking, and reading adventure. One book I pulled back from the sale pile is a tattered paperback by Cormac McCarthy, a well-worn paperback pressed into my hands by a winter ranger over coffee and fresh cookies at the Exit Glacier cabin one spring evening. The ranger was a rough and ready type that I figure could probably load a packhorse, handle a chainsaw, and build a fire in a rainstorm, and like, many who spend time alone in the wild, he was a reader. I enjoy Cormac McCarthy's writing, though he can turn dark and pessimistic. But this book I keep not for the writing, but for the reading. The cover is curled and torn its plastic reinforcement peeling back like dead skin around a wound, and the pages are stained and faded brown. The book had held together well and a hand-written note tucked in the pages provides some provence. "This book has come all the way from Sequoia National Park and has spent a little time being carried on horses itself as evidenced by its cover." There's more to the note, recommending McCarthy's writing.  It's books like this that stay on my shelf, books with a story beyond what's printed on the pages.