Reading envy

Due to the complete lack of space in my apartment, my book gluttony has gone underground and is now manifesting itself in my ginormous Amazon.com wish list. It's big and getting bigger, and sometimes I wonder how big the biggest Amazon.com wish list really is. But then the question must be asked: is there really such a thing as a wish list that’s too big? I’m acquisitive when it comes to books. Libraries are fabulous, especially when the bank account and the shelf space are constricted, but generally I like to own what I read. I love finding room on the shelf for a book I just finished. Also, I have a memory like a sieve, so having books on hand helps me remember what I’ve read versus what I’d like to read.

The weight of books, the texture of their covers and pages, the way they populate a room—it’s one of the most soothing things in the world. Someone once asked me to define what makes a home and three things immediately popped to mind: books, cats and love. Cheesy but true.

Lately I’ve been missing my books. I brought one box of them to my apartment when I moved in last year, the rationale being that I wanted to travel light and there is nothing light about multiple boxes of books. But I miss having bookshelves that actually hold more than pictures. It’s a sort of rootless feeling, like being adrift without a reference point. Yesterday Renate and I were emailing about Sylvia Plath and I instinctually started looking for my copy of Ariel before remembering that it’s in a box in my parent’s basement, along with every other book I own. Grrr. I hate walking around a bookstore and hesitating about buying a book because I don’t know if I already own it. I tried to explain the book envy to Lunchboy and he said, “What books are you talking about? You don’t have that many.” I was like, “Oh, you have no idea.”

My life, like the life of any other habitual reader, can be traced in books. The ones my parents read to me when I was little, the ones I grew up reading, the ones my mother had to take away from me because I read them to tatters. The high school angst books, the summer reading, the college English references, the required course books, the books I dreaded that turned out to be revelations. I took a contemporary American lit class at Yale where we read 16 books and it was like Christmas every week. Everyone has their milestone books, the ones that were thought-shapers, defining every step you took after you finished the last page.

After college, I went on a book spree. The remainders room in the Harvard Book Store should have just garnished my wages and formalized the arrangement. The result: a mountain of boxes that my mother can’t wait for me to get out of her house. Somewhere in my future is a renovated Victorian house stacked to the ceilings with built-in bookshelves. Until then, or at least until I get to a living space with storage, my Amazon list will have to stay virtual. My boxes will stay in Sudbury and I’ll just have to go visit them.