{"id":80,"date":"2011-10-13T09:41:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T14:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jackcampbelljr.wordpress.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2011-10-13T09:41:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T14:41:24","slug":"beneath-the-avalanche-of-previously-read-pages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/2011\/10\/13\/beneath-the-avalanche-of-previously-read-pages\/","title":{"rendered":"Beneath the Avalanche of Previously Read Pages"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0 have a very good memory for images and phrases.\u00a0 I have largely relied upon that memory when it comes to one of my favorite hobbies, used book stores.<\/p>\n

I will find a book by an author I like, or simply something sitting in the $1.00 bin that looks interesting.\u00a0 I will then mentally compare it to images in my head, deciding whether or not I already it.\u00a0 Is it one of the hundred books I own that I have yet to read?\u00a0 I buy books at nearly the same rate I read them, if not more quickly, meaning the gap between read and owned just keeps getting larger.\u00a0 Thus, I found myself returning a copy of The Resurrection by John Gardner, of which I found an older edition already upon my shelves.<\/p>\n

It’s not my fault, really.\u00a0 I am a book addict.\u00a0 I walk in to a used bookstore and I breathe in the pages.\u00a0 The bookstore is a comforting smell and a comforting sound.\u00a0 Despite being a mercantile establishment, the bookstore is quiet and serene as a\u00a0 library.\u00a0 I walk the aisles and find books with worn spines.\u00a0 These books were once read passionately.\u00a0 If I listened closely, I could probably hear the dreams of its past readers.<\/p>\n

I open the book and flip through the pages.\u00a0 Sometimes I am lucky and find artifacts of the book’s past life.\u00a0 Here, an inscription to John, from his mother, who gave him the book.\u00a0 John, in turn, apparently sold it to the bookstore.\u00a0 I\u00a0 found entire papers on literary theory written in the margins and blank pages of As I Lay Dying.\u00a0 My favorite recent find was a postcard used as a bookmark within Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.\u00a0 Someone visited a place they loved enough to buy a postcard.\u00a0 Finding it inside a book on the writing life was like finding seeing another person’s life in object form.<\/p>\n

A friend suggested I try tracking the books I owned on Goodreads.com.\u00a0 Last night, I logged them.\u00a0 I own around 350 books.\u00a0 If you add the collection on my Kindle, that puts me well over 500.\u00a0 It’s amazing how quickly the count snuck up on me.\u00a0 It didn’t seem like I had that many books, even though the wall of my bedroom is lined with shelves, straining from being overfilled by paperbacks.\u00a0 Most of them are in their second life, having been purchased used.<\/p>\n

As a writer, I find them comforting.\u00a0 They represent a successful writing project for the author, as in successfully published.\u00a0 Some of the books aren’t exactly successful, if you know what I mean.\u00a0 They also represent a past reader.\u00a0 Within the bookshelves exists hundreds of examples of the writer-reader relationship.\u00a0 It is a reminder that people still care about books, and what is written in them.<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine trying to move again.\u00a0 Books are heavy and the last time was a real pain.\u00a0 Ironically, for a used book lover, I have a very hard time selling books.\u00a0 Although before long, space might force my hand, or risk dying under a heap of collapsed oxidized-yellow pages.<\/p>\n

Next time you are in a used book store, don’t shun the books with writing in the margins, or names written inside the covers.\u00a0 Realize they were loved once, and you may love them again.\u00a0 Be suspicious of perfection in a bookstore.\u00a0\u00a0 Books without cracked spines and dog-eared pages can’t be trusted.<\/p>\n

Happy hunting.\u00a0 You may find yourself lost for hours, or at the very least, with a very space-consuming habit.\u00a0 Just don’t blame me for the weight of the UHaul boxes the next time you move.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0 have a very good memory for images and phrases.\u00a0 I have largely relied upon that memory when it comes to one of my favorite hobbies, used book stores. I will find a book by an author I like, or simply something sitting in the $1.00 bin that looks interesting.\u00a0 I will then mentally compare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[24,47,48,78,155,196,231,298,334,395,418],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-2","category-writing","tag-addiction","tag-books","tag-bookstores","tag-collection","tag-goodreads","tag-kindle","tag-moving","tag-reading","tag-shelves","tag-used","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jackcampbelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}