Reading

The End of Private Libraries

Friday, March 1, 2024 • 6 min read

There seem to be two kinds of people on this earth—those who love books and everyone else. The bookish have always been far outnumbered, and the gap must be widening in this age of endless digital entertainment. I count myself among the proud minority, but a book, of all things, has brought into question my lifelong practice of keeping a private library.

A recent acquisition illustrates the issue.

“Didn’t you just read this on your Kindle,” Lisa asks me as she flips through the book I’ve brought home.

I dislike direct questioning about my book-buying habits. It feels like the pointed inquiries on medical questionnaires about alcohol consumption.

“Yeah, but I liked it so much I wanted the hard copy,” I tell her.

The fact is, I will likely never read this book, even though I did enjoy it. I bought the book because I like having a visual, tangible record of the time this book and I spent together. I like scanning my shelves and seeing proof of a rich reading life. I like the way a roomful of books makes me feel about myself. Besides, I tell myself, there are worse ways to spend money.

Like most fixations, the origin can often be traced to our youngest days. Pine bookcases flanked the living room fireplace of my childhood home. I can picture the red and black spines of the encyclopedias that filled half those shelves. I spent hours poring over those portals of knowledge at an unnaturally young age. What an odd duck I must have been, this quiet young boy with his nose stuck in an encyclopedia.

A public library beckoned four blocks away, a magical place for a shy little kid. When a kind librarian led me to a shelf of thirty or forty Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators mystery books, I knelt in almost religious piety, awestruck.

I must have viewed that library as a refuge from the troubles my eight-year-old brain struggled to process at home. I felt safer exploring a haunted citadel in Istanbul with Jupiter Jones than I did around my own family. Later, when the divorce was final, and I moved with my mom and new stepdad to a trailer park in Forks, I dreamed of the calm order of that library — the hush and quiet — amidst the babble and grunge of a beaten-down logging town, our family the poorest in a landfill of white trash.

Living hand to mouth at a young age forever shaped my views on the importance of having enough money, but I’ve always spent freely on books. If I look up from where I write this, I can spot my earliest purchases. A Sentimental Education. Look Homeward, Angel. The Sun Also Rises. These old friends have stuck with me my entire life. Eight apartments and three houses, always near.

If I widen my gaze to take in the walls of shelves surrounding me — a collection of some two thousand volumes now — I can trace the outline of my life’s obsessions: boxing, gardening, philosophy, strategy, bird watching, statistics, history, poetry. Shelves and shelves of sailing and tall ships and the sea, books that even here in the desert can launch me miles and miles offshore. And so much great literature: the French, the Russians, the English, the Americans. These last shelved by era, early to late.

Each spine has meaning to me. I recall at a glance where and who I was when I read it. Pulling a book down from the shelves, I feel transported. The heft of the book in my hands, the smell, particularly from my oldest books, wafting up as I thumb through the pages, letting a random passage catch my eye. I read and remember.

In every other part of my life, I am downsizing, simplifying. Most unhappiness stems from a desire for material things. I fantasize about renting a flat in Madrid for three months with just a few clothes, a journal, and my Kindle. And yet, here I sit in this roomful of material things, these books of comfort and consolation, in complete denial of what I know to be true.

I admire those grand Country Manors with their massive libraries passed down for generations. Until recently, I imagined a distant future when my grandchildren and their grandchildren would cherish my library. Yet, times have changed. I have no Country Manor, and books, once the pinnacle of knowledge and wisdom, are no longer quite so prized.

Shaun Bythell, in his memoir, The Diary of a Bookseller, tells the awful truth. In his business, he buys personal libraries from estates. The heir, often the son or daughter of the deceased, shows little emotion toward the collection of dusty books they’ve inherited. “What would I want with all these?” They look around, bewildered. What must have cost a fortune and a lifetime to assemble is sold, gratefully, for $500. My shock when I read about this first encounter turned to numb despair as the situation repeated at various estates throughout the memoir. No one wants these books. No one.

I called my daughter in Los Angeles. She’s a reader like me but prefers a Kindle to physical books. Of course, she wants the books, she said, but without much enthusiasm.

The notion that this library and I might share the same dissolution took a while to accept, like a wild plot twist in a novel you didn’t see coming. Perhaps it never dawned on me how used bookstores acquire so many wonderful books in the first place. I pull down book after book for evidence. A set of Wallace Stegner books I purchased last year bears the previous owner’s carefully inscribed name and address. A Google search turns up the obituary: her death preceded my purchase by two short months.

As I consider the likely future of this little library, I feel more reflective than anguished. After all, books are beacons of light for me, as for many wayward travelers. Let that be enough. My gaze slips along the spines, and I acknowledge each silently. How many thousands of hours have we spent together, ruminating, investigating? How many journeys? These books have shaped and reshaped me. How can you tell where the stories end and the man begins?

I imagine a time when these books take flight, like a great host of swallows, all chaos and boxes and pages aflutter, and in time settle on a thousand different shelves to inspire a thousand new owners.

Until then, let’s commiserate together, my friends, my shipmates. Let us sing on the deck of this foundering ship, our voices a cheer across the ages.