Thursday Ramble: Books

I am off to a reading pace that may result in a record number of books read again this year.  For most of the 15 years I worked in DC, I read on the subway train in and out of the city, an hour plus each day, a book a week on average. Now that I am retired I read in the evenings, and sometimes in the afternoon.  I read on planes, and trains when I travel.  I am looking forward to reading as I slowly cross the Atlantic later this year. (We are taking another slow boat to Europe.) 

I didn't grow up in a house of book lovers. My parents read the daily Detroit News newspaper, but seldom read books.  My father had some technical manuals for flying, he would study those, and as soon as he had mastered the material and passed the test, the books would disappear. I don't know if he gave them away, or threw them away, but they were gone.  I can't recall my mother ever buying a book, or going to the library when I was growing up.  There were very few books in the house.  My mother's rant was that books were expensive and took up space, and space was tight. They raised 4 children in about 900 sq. ft. (less than 100 sq. meters.). Growing up I received a few books as gifts, and bought a handful from the scholastic book fair, but was told that I needed to find someplace for them. One spring my mother tossed all of the children's' books with the explanation that we had outgrown them.  My grandmother would occasionally take me to the local library, I remember reading everything they had by Jack London one summer. 

I was in high school when I first started spending time in Walden Books bookstore in the Miracle City Mall in Titusville, where my family was starting to spend winters.  The first couple of winters buying books was against a protest of what are you going to do with those when we go home, as we were renting a condo on a seasonal basis, then they bought the house in Florida. 

I started working in Orlando in 1980, and built my first house in the fall of 1982. About that time a large bookstore opened on Colonial Drive backed up to Orlando Executive Airport, and I discovered the joys of books.  I started reading for fun, and collecting books. 

In about 1986 I started at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. And discovered Park Avenue Books, just up the street from the college.  I was smitten.  I fell into a pattern of finding a topic that interested me, and reading everything I could get my hands on. The staff there would notice what I was buying, and say, come back in a couple of weeks and I will have something special for you. They new how to feed my addiction.  I was saddened when their lease was up, the landlord wanted to double the rent and they closed.  

There are three books that were assigned reading in high school and college that struck a chord with me.  Walden, I have read it a dozen times. Zorba the Greek, I have read it probably five times, I prefer the movie.  Cross Creek, I have read it several times, the last time I found it profoundly racist, and doubt that I will read it again, though it does contain amazing prose about the climate and landscape of central Florida.   

My love of books continued when we moved to Lexington.  During law school, I really didn't have time for pleasure reading, I would stack books up and binge read during winter break and over the summers. There was a good independent bookstore in town, and several used book dealers. 

For 15 years I was almost exclusively a Kindle E-book reader.  E-books were a little cheaper (you are only buying the right to read them, not the book) and required no storage space. 

When we sold the house in Lexington and consolidated into the condo, we had a problem with books, we were consolidating from 2,800 sq. ft to 1,100 sq ft. We gave away a few thousand books. Today I have to force myself to part with a few books each year, to add new keepers to the collection.  I am in my second year of a love affair with my local library.  In the lobby of the high rise we live in there is a study, with a bookcase in it, where residents leave books they want to part with, and pick up books they would like to read. The last time I took down 5 books, and came back with 1 (The Piano Shop on The Left Bank, by Thad Carhart - one of the best books I have read this year.)