Read a good book lately?

Page 4

Once again, I find myself in a position of having to move house and body, and like many people who occasionally find themselves nomadic, I look with foreboding at my shelves upon shelves upon shelves of books that line my walls. I have never actually counted them, but I'm sure they are high up into the high hundreds, maybe even the thousands. Eventually, they will all have to be boxed, carried, and unloaded somewhere in the city, most probably with several large groans and yet another impotent promise of "Nothing short of a nuclear war will ever make me move again."

At various stages in my life I have been told, or more accurately it has been heartily suggested by friends who have helped me move, that perhaps I should consider being a little less protective of my books, or again more accurately, a little less literarily pack rat-ish. As one poor friend suggested under the weight of my Stephen King collection, "What good are they once you've read them?"

True, I could probably make a small fortune if I were to descend upon some luckless (or very lucky, depending on your point of view) second-hand book store with my volumes of stories. But it could also potentially devastate our already battered stock market, and stocks in used book stores would plummet, with the glut of books suddenly dumped onto the market. But I have too much respect for our Canadian economy to let that happen.

Besides, I have a unique relationship with all my books. I keep them close for a number of reasons. They are memories, a conquered world, each book representing a trophy of accomplishments. I keep them on the their shelves in a vain belief that maybe, someday, I will find the time to read them once again when all the other books in the universe have been destroyed. They are my friends.

Then again, maybe my friends are right in that I'm being a little melodramatic when it comes to a couple ounces of paper and ink. My grandparents thought that. During my teenage years, they apparently told my mother quite seriously, "you shouldn't let him read so much. It's not normal." When you're the only child of a single mother growing up on an Ojibway reserve in the 1970s, your options for entertainment are somewhat limited. I was reading John Wandym and H.G. Wells between episodes of Welcome Back Kotter.

Today, my library is a little more varied. Soon I will be crating books ranging from nostalgically cherished trashy sci-fi, to a variety of almanacs and reference books, to an amazing collection of Native literature, to many of the classics - including a signed copy of Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman.

Is it worth it? Purchasing the books themselves is fairly expensive. So are the bookshelves used to store them. Replacing the ones friends borrow, honestly promising they'll return them, can cost a few bucks. And when moving, the men, the time and truck space used to cart them from place to place will undoubtedly add up to an uncomfortable fee. All this for some books I have literally (no pun intended) not opened in 20 years.

Of course it's worth it. I remember visiting a friend for dinner years ago. And something in their house nagged at my subconscious. It took a while but I finally realized there were no books visible anywhere in the house. No bookshelves in the living room. No coffee-table books or even magazines on the coffee table. Not even any cook books in the kitchen. The only paper in the bathroom was toilet paper. This was devoid of literature of any kind. It seemed barren.

Call me biased, but to me, it's those books that help me make a home and define it. How many of us, upon entering a new house, quickly scanned the bookshelves to get a speedy grasp of where these people's minds are, where they let their imagination take them. At least I do.

So when I start packing my books, at least one thing will give me some solace. All that reading and all those books allowed me the opportunity to become a writer. And somewhere out there are sme of the 11 books I have been lucky enough to publish. And further out there are masses of other people packing to move their house and body. And one hopes they are grunting and groaning over a box of my books.