Today, I was fortunate to have a moment of clarity that allowed me to take 20 quilting and woodworking books off my shelves and secure them in plastic grocery bags, suitable for delivery to our local library.
I am rarely successful doing this, because after the 20th book, I move to the 21st book and realize that I can't part with any of them. My mind becomes a muddle and I find myself unable to render a decision about anything! But today, I did ok. The 20 books are on the credenza in the hallway, and Lauren knows the routine to pick them up as he walks out the door, stop by the library, ring the bell at the back door, and deliver the two nicely secured bags to the person who answers.
I like it when Lauren does the delivery work for me. When I'm the delivery person, I always think those those people know I'm guilty of being a bookaholic and they're probably snickering as they help me relieve a tiny piece of my guilty conscious.
Pleased with my success and thinking to fool myself by switching to books of a different topic, I moved to the living room and started on a shelf with books about literature and the written word. The first book I picked up was Ex Libris, Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman. Fadiman used to write the end article in Good Housekeeping (or some other magazine I like to read), and I loved her no-nonsense laced-with-humor style. Her writings are of the kind that make you choke as surprise laughter erupts from your throat. She builds you up with suspense about where she's going next, and then she nails the truth. Erma Bombeck had a similar style of humor that takes you in before you know it. I always have to go back and read the preceding sentences to see where I was caught, where I should have anticipated the gotcha to come. To me, the style is pure genius!
Selecting the Fadiman as my first candidate from this bunch, I fail. It's such a nice, small, and compact book. It measures about 5 x 7, it has a strange green and yellow cover, with brown lettering, and the title is so catchy. It's just cute! Even so, were those the book's only redeeming qualities, I could probably part with it, but I made the mistake of opening it, and I was done for.
The chapter was Words on a Flyleaf, and it describes a period when Anne and her future husband were courting ("courting" seems like a more accurate description than "dating" - courting implies those long looks from the side, the lowered eyelashes, the hesitancy as you give forward a piece of your feelings and hope to receive like feelings in return). They gave each other books for Christmas. He wrote, on the third page of the book he gave her: To a new true friend. The book Anne gave George had been autographed by the author, and Anne recounts her additional inscription like this:
I wrote: To George, with love from Anne. Then I mistranscribed a quotation from Red Smith. And finally - on the principle that if you don't know what to say, say everything - I added fifteen lines of my own reflections on the nature of intimacy... It's a miracle that the book, its recipient, and the new true friendship weren't all crushed under the weight of the inscription.Overwriting! Do all book lovers overwrite? How many times have I done the same! This was one of the many gotchas in Fadiman's little book, Ex Libris, and I love every one of them.
Ex Libris is the only Fadiman book I own, so it's going to stay on my shelf for a while longer. It's a joyful thing to pick it up and read a few lines. When I first purchased it, I read the whole thing, but reading it all at once isn't a requirement for a jewel like this. You can drop in at any point, visit for a few minutes, and then drop out. It's that satisfying.
With a little luck, I'll have another moment of clarity some day soon, but I won't start with the shelf where Fadiman's book resides. No way!
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