My bookshelf turned a corner recently. I mean it actually, literally turned a corner, in my study. I used to have one wall covered with bookshelves, and now I have that one and part of another. The shelves are plain white full-height bookshelves from Ikea, because they’re pretty cheap and pretty good. I could have gotten one of their special corner units and been trendy, but they’re kind of expensive and I would rather spend the money on more books. So I just got another ordinary bookshelf unit and made sure it came together with the others in a nice, clean angle. It looks right; the room feels larger now.
I never seem to be able to organize my bookshelves. A couple times a year I take everything, or almost everything, out, planning to put it all back in some way that will be somehow, intangibly, better. Maybe I’ll put all the fantasy over here, and the “serious” fiction over there; but then where do I put Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale? So scratch that. But I can’t quite scratch it: there’s a meaningful distinction to be made. Perhaps I will start with Harlan Ellison on one side and Donald Barthelme on the other, and let them collide somewhere around Douglas Adams. Then I’ll start a new section for Aristotle, Thucydides, and Beowulf. Do I separate original ancient languages from translations? In the end, I usually give up, and at least try to make sure that textbooks and comic books are properly segregated from prose fiction, and that I have places of honor for the most important fantasy. (Gene Wolfe and J.R.R. Tolkien used to sit side-by-side, but no longer fit together. C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman share a shelf, with two editions of Lewis Carroll in between as a buffer to keep them from fighting.)
Most of my books are fairly new--I mean the paper itself, however old the words--because, alas, moldy old pages seem to be one of the things I’m allergic to. My brother got all the really dangerous food allergies; I got all the annoying ones, the ones that subtly interfere with your lifestyle. I often envision myself, after a long and fruitful career as God-knows-what, settling down in an old house in the middle of a deep New England forest, surrounded by cats and old tomes. Naturally, my worst allergies are to cats and New England pine trees, and nothing sets off my dust and mold allergies like old books and old houses. But I love the feel of old paper, with its interesting, rough textures, and I love the smell, too, at least for the few minutes before I start sneezing.
Fortunately I also love the smell of new, modern paper, that sweet, sharp chemical smell that makes you want to inhale deeply even though you also suspect it’s dissolving your neurons. I get most of my books from Amazon these days, and whenever I open one of their boxes I experience a brief moment of total euphoria as all the modern-paper-smell is released. Glossy technical books are by far the most chemically potent, so I try to include one in my order as often as I can.
I wish Amazon still included bookmarks in their packages. Why did they stop? I guess it gives me a reason to visit a real-world bookstore now and then. Another reason is that I recently discovered I can redeem my credit card’s bonus points in the form of Borders gift cards. They come as $25 cards even if you redeem several hundred dollars at once. For a while I was walking around with ten or twelve Borders gift cards in my wallet. I’d walk up to the store counter, deposit a big stack of books with a satisfying thunk, and grin as I presented my card, commenting, “Gift card!” They’d take it and scan it. “Okay, thirty-seven dollars please.” “Gift card!” “Twelve dollars.” “Gift card!” “All right, you have thirteen dollars left on the card. Have a nice day.” It’s important that the universe know you are in some sense insane. It’s less likely to pick on you that way, because you might just be irrational enough to fight back.
I suppose that’s another reason why I feel it’s so important to have a room in which I can be surrounded by books. I’ve had guests in that room who felt threatened by their presence (“Have you really read all of them?”), and when talking to such people I like to know that I have allies on all sides.