My Intimate Relationships With Books IV

Part of the appeal used books have for me is going to a marvelous used book store and rummaging around. Powell's , in Portland, is one of the best and biggest in the world yet I feel at home there. I also love smaller stores, often owned by a single person or husband and wife who love books, book writers, and book readers, like Rediscovered Books , owned by Laura and Bruce DeLaney, here in Boise.

Aisles in used book stores, even when neatly arranged, are stuffed with old hard and soft bound books in various stages of use-ed-ness, basically catalogued, but sometimes with piles that haven't been, and you can peer through them to find an unexpected jewel. I have spent hours just looking around. Having one of those old leather chairs to settle into for a while with a possible purchase or just to read a poem or a passage is usually part of the ambiance.

New books are like treasures to be opened but used books become friends of friends–someone has been moved, informed, formed, reformed, or touched by them—often all of those—and although I can spend an afternoon roaming through Barnes and Noble, emerging poorer in pocketbook but wealthier overall, used bookstores are like libraries of knowledge, with wisdom and entertainment available for purchase. They are similar in feel, I imagine, to wandering through the vast holdings of the Library of Alexandria , back in the day, or to the spirit of care which is hand-crafted (if I may use a term perhaps more casually applied by milkshake makers or sandwich shops these days) into the soul of manuscripts preserved by monastic libraries and their monkly scriptoriums.

Walking the aisles of a used book store is walking through a history of the writer, but also through all the readers of each book and the cumulated books who have gone before. It's immersive and holds the unseen, but felt, gravitas of lives lived and experienced through books.

Used books not only represent the ghosts of the authors who wrote them, but also the spirits of those who have read them before. Then you leave your imprint on them—your marginalia or just a bit of your soul or perhaps even a splotch of catsup from your hamburger. Then on to the next reader to become a part of another person’s life, who then leaves a drop of soup or a sketch or a tear behind, just as the book leaves its mark on each who turn its pages. Unlike relationships between people, a book can have an intimate relationship with many, many people.

But I’m jealous because there will always be more books–best friends, confidantes, counselors, teachers, guides, family—with whom to share deepest secrets, hopes, fears, and dreams, than I will ever get to know.