While the potential list of topics for self-indulgent blog posts is perhaps endless, I am sure writing about reading must be one of the more common themes. I know I shouldn't join in (who am I,
Anne Fadiman?), but nonetheless I can't resist.
Living abroad my relationship with books has changed considerably, especially with English-language books. Sure, it is nice to immerse yourself by diving into the local literature - but who am I kidding. I've been reading English for 20 years, Turkish for 3 and Russian for only 1... and there is nothing like flying through a book in a native language.
In Istanbul I was spoiled. With
Pandora and
Robinson Crusoe, there was no real reason not to have my hands on nearly any English book I wanted, if I didn't mind a wait and paying full price. Their in-store selections as well are wonderful and make for good browsing. In Ukraine I haven't had as much luck; I found exactly two English books I wanted in Kyiv, and have yet to have anything catch my interest here in Simferopol. Although
New Headway English Course: Intermediate seems tempting.
But not a drop to drink
No, here I have the books I brought with or a sea of Russian. The only other alternatives I seem to have at the moment are trading books with missionaries or getting into the pdf book swapping scene.
It is not even a matter of specific books that I want. You could offer to send me any 3 books I wanted and I would still complain. The ability to go to a library - even not a particularly good one - and pick from a selection of books that I may want to read. That is what I want!
This next part may be controversial, but so be it. It is not even that I necessarily need to be able to read the books. Let them lay around on the desk, the bed, the floor. I'd like to check out a few books, similar or wildly different, leave them stacked up for a week or two while I read one or two or a little of all, or even none at all, and then return them for another collection, chosen completely by whim. So what if my love of books is related to but also separate from my love of reading. Should a letter writer feel guilty about collecting stamps?
The stacks
When I was in Gaylord this summer, I paid a few visits to the
Otsego County Library. The silver lining in the meager selection is the impossibility of browsing without reminders of past visits. Every time I go I see a few books that spent some time on my desk (or floor), even if I didn't exactly read them. A failed attempt to teach myself German. A childhood obsession with
Miss Manners.
On my last visit, I picked up Nabokov's Pnin, which I had never read before. I fell in love with the book, and even more so the edition:
Confession: I wanted to steal the library book. I wanted it to be mine. Mine! Never mind there are plenty of other residents of Otsego County who are still to discover this wonderful edition of Pnin, or even Nabokov himself, who of course should not be deprived of such an opportunity.
One of Heidi's friends cited some alleged OCL policy where each patron may "lose" one library book in the lifetime without penalty. Sounded to me like the "students can leave if the teacher is 15 minutes late" rule, but I briefly considered. Regardless of the fact that my go was probably used up when I was a child and the library unfairly accused me of losing some book about a mouse, it didn't seem right. But as I searched online for a picture of that cover to accompany this post, I came across an even better edition. Now if this had been the copy in question I might have had to reconsider.
Want. And no, I don't read Nabokov in Russian, as I can hardly comprehend him in English.
(Of course, for perhaps one of the best editions of all, sneak a look
here. Also thanks to Life's archives, you can imagine
this as an early version.)
My own libraries, at home and in expatia
Of course I would never go through with stealing a library book. Not even saying I'd lost the book to see if the replacement fee was cheaper than that edition on the used market. Why, that is worse than littering in front of the courthouse, lying on a census or not voting! Try as I may, I am stuck with a deep respect for the institution of the library. Even good ol' OCL.
In fact, as a young, asthmatic perfectionist, I even attempted to create my own. My first act as librarian of the basement was to organize the fiction. Cutting tiny white stickers out of nametags and placing them on the binding of the books, I carefully marked the books with two lines of text. So Matilda looked like this:
Dah
The non-fiction was a problem, as I did not possess the magical "key" to figure out how books were assigned call numbers under the Dewey Decimal System. I spent a good deal of time trying to solve this problem. I believe I might have been planning to ask our librarian for a "list" before my mother intervened. That is how I remember it, anyhow.
After my first trip to a university library, I lost all remaining faith in Dewey as I learned that not all followed his mysterious code. So like most private collectors, I created my own system. In my little corner of Simferopol, with my small assortment of books, I've settled on the following: books I'm working on strewn in the comfortable reading zones of the flat, the largest four volumes forming makeshift stands for electronics, and the remaining, after much contemplation, organized by some combination of aesthetics and size without heed to subject matter.
