The Big Book of Wonders and Delights- Part II (interim)

Still working on that big book of ......stuff. I'm using up a lot of paint and glue and making a mess. It's like being a kid in kindergarten again with art as the major part of the daily lesson plan. Wouldn't that be great? Above is a preview of one of the pages. An old experiment in collage. Other pages I am creating from scratch or reassembling from bits of this and that:

In the meantime I have been thinking a lot about books and how important they have been in my life. I have always had a library of sorts. Nothing fancy, just shelves to hold the books. There is something about tangibly seeing the books that makes them a part of your home, like a well-loved painting or a comfy sofa. Right now my so-called library is a wall of shelves in the basement:

Some of those books are classics. I would like to say I have read them all but I have not. Some I studied in high school and college, others I read in book club. I got hardback heritage copies of these books because they are great literature and should be respected.

Other books are the original versions that my Dad used to read to us as children, like this favorite edition of The Arabian Nights from the 1950's.

I also have a fondness for poetry. It used to be cool to read poetry. The country used to have poet laureates whose names we recognized, like Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. I feel bad that I don't even know if we have a poet laureate anymore.

Sometimes I buy a book just because it has beautiful artwork in it.

But mostly I have bought books just to get lost in them. And despite the "nice" books I own, I have a particular fondness for the lowly paperback: the cheap paper, the flashy cover, the ease of creasing a page, stuffing it into a purse, scribbling in a margin, bending the spine, spilling coffee on the print, basically treating it like a throwaway. Years later I handle these books kindly, still not thrown away, and I remember exactly where I was, how old I was, and how, when first opening those pages, I was transported and transformed.

I guess that's the problem with the Kindle. Even though I have read about twenty books on mine this past year, and have, I suppose, saved some paper from the landfill, it has no lingering tactile memory. I will only remember holding a piece of plastic with a screen, no matter which book I have read. It will all be the same touch and smell (or lack of), whether I am reading a Pulitzer Prize winner or a pulp murder mystery.
When I worked in a book store in my madcap youth, it surprised me at first to find out that when we returned paperback books to the publisher, we tore off the covers to return for credit, and threw the rest of the book away. It no longer had any value. Naturally we employees scooped up all those coverless books and  took them home to read. I still have a few of those books without 'faces' from that time, (including the juicy biography of Lana Turner) looking a bit sad and naked, but still a friend on the shelf.
Lately I have been culling some of my books, knowing I no longer have that particular interest (70's style crocheted sweaters?) or will never read them again, donating them to the library, to used book stores, or to friends. As I get older the idea of collecting gives way to the idea of not leaving a lot of mess behind when I have gone. My children are not readers like I am. Maybe they will grow into it. Maybe they will only see all those books as dust collectors weighing down their mobile lives. All their photos, their music, their books, their mail, their games, will be in one little lightweight place. Oh, say like this:

Wuthering Heights, anyone? I think it's about co-dependence........