By the time anyone is reading this, Mrs. Biblioracle and I will have moved into a new (to us) house.
After moving multiple times during our 30s, we have been in the same location for the entirety of our 40s (and into our 50s), and of course, in my case, that means I’ve got a lot of books to deal with.
While our earthly possessions will make their way from the old house to the new in a single day, the actual process of deciding which books to move has taken the better part of a month. First, I exiled about 10 boxes to temporary storage because apparently prospective buyers see lots of books as “cluttered” rather than “cozy.”
Once the house sold, it’s been the process of packing the books in boxes, which inevitably has required me to decide which books to keep and which have to find new homes.
There are practical choices, and books directly related to my professional work are easy choices to keep, but the vast majority of books exist in some other more nebulous place. They are mostly books (primarily novels and collections of short stories) that I’ve already read, and that I’m unlikely to read again, and yet I am not going to get rid of them.
I have been using the Marie Kondo method, asking myself if each book “sparks joy” and the answer in the vast majority of cases is “yes.”
But why? Why am I attached to an inanimate object in this way? What is the connection that has been formed?
Not to get too highfalutin, but I think it’s about capital A “Art.”
For this I’m going to turn to my old friend Leo Tolstoy who said this about “art” (or “Art”), “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.”
In other words, what Leo is saying from the artist’s perspective is that his job is to capture the experience of living with such fidelity, that the artist can then transmit that feeling to the viewer/listener/reader through the medium of their expression.
As a reader, I have been on the receiving end of this transference a countless number of times, and it is these books I have been carefully packing in boxes that have delivered those experiences.
So, for example, when I pick up James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” I remember the ache of grief and romance the book evokes.
When I see Sam Lipsyte’s “Home Land,” I recall laughing myself breathless, on a plane surrounded by strangers, no less. It’s a battered paperback, in horrible shape because I’ve lent it out and taught from it, unsightly on the shelf, but it goes in the box.
Because there have been so many books and I am getting older, I may forget the experience of art if I didn’t have the book to remind me. This happened with Elizabeth Strout’s “Anything is Possible,” a book that had me truly hoping that in the real world people could be kind to each other in the way they are in the world of the book.
When stacked in the living room of the home we’re leaving, my books take up more space than everything from the kitchen, a ratio over which I am both chagrined and more than a little proud.
It’s clear. I may be done reading these books, but I am not done living them.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read
1. “One Day I Shall Astonish the World” by Nina Stibbe
2. “True Biz” by Sara Novic
3. “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” by Percival Everett
4. “A Far Cry from Kensington” by Muriel Spark
5. “Marriage Material” by Sathnam Sanghera
For Cheryl, I’m recommending a close personal story that has much larger resonances in the culture at large, “Transcendent Kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi.
1. “In Other Lands” by Sarah Rees Brennan
2. “A Marvellous Light” by Freya Marske
3. “A Mirror Mended” by Alix E. Harrow
4. “To Say Nothing of the Dog” by Connie Willis
5. “Let’s Not Do That Again” by Grant Ginder
Maria seems to be drawn to some stories with fantastical or supernatural elements that are important, but more a vehicle for the human story underneath. I think Max Barry’s “Lexicon” will be a nice, propulsive reading experience for her.
1. “Dare Me” by Megan Abbott
2. “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman
3. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
4. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot
5. “The Lincoln Lawyer” by Michael Connelly
We now know her from the stunning otherworldliness of “Station Eleven” and “Sea of Tranquility,” but Emily St. John Mandel started her career with some very tricky and highly involving noirish novels. For Lisa, I’m recommending “Last Night in Montreal.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
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