The Perfect Library

Amidst the burgeoning hubub of my last semester of Master's work and most especially amidst the hubub of my wife and I opening escrow on our first house I have been thinking less about particular books than the idea of needing to move them as well as where I will be moving them to. I'm pretty sure that I have already picked out which room will be my office/library, pending the wife's approval (who will be seeing the house for the first time this weekend thanks to a 6-week long training on the East Coast) and I have already begun to play a mental game of Tetris in reference to exactly how everything will fit into this room. I will describe the reality of the room in a bit but I first want to detour into the train of thought that this obviously leads me to; my concept of the perfect library.

 

 

As I mentioned last week I have grown up with images of the vast, magical libraries from movies and other real-life experiences. Of course there is always the caveat of actually having the ability to read all of these collected books. As a result my concept of the perfect private library is a bit scaled down but not without its own magical perfection. Thanks to the advent of Google Sketch-up I've managed to put my imagination into some type of tangible form which I will attempt to show here.

 

 

First, my perfect library necessarily exists within the perfect house; my dream house which I have designed complete with a sweeping staircase, fireman's pole, secret passages, and a turret capped with a 360-degree reading room (if you're dreaming, might as well dream big). The library itself is just off the main hall (inlaid with a giant compass rose). The library is entered through a huge green, round door, with a brass knob in its center (I hope you recognize the reference). This door opens into a long room with a high ceiling and light pouring through the window seat directly opposite the door. Directly in front of this window is the desk; a broad flat affair with no drawers, just a nice amount of legroom beneath, and accompanied by a high backed leather executive chair and lit by a green glass secretary's lamp with brass hardware and a little hanging chain. The floor is wood and covered with a Persian rug. On the wall to either side of the door two small portraits: Leonardo DaVinci on the right and J.R.R. Tolkien on the left. Since I am a man of many hobbies the DaVinci wall is dedicated to music. It is divided into two sections of cabinetry; one with long doors opening to a miniature recording studio, the other containing drawers below and glass doors above with lights to illuminate my two most valued guitars. The left hand wall houses the books; the entire wall has been dedicated to shelves, maybe with a few open spots for knickknacks but mostly as a placeholder until more books arrive. This wall also houses the obligatory rolling ladder which leaves just enough room for the other stationary high-backed reading chair. I could tell you about the secret passage but that would be giving away too much, wouldn't it?

Now to face the reality; this dream would probably take up a space larger than the master bedroom in our new house. The room that I will probably use (again pending the wife's approval) might fit the desk and two bookshelves. The music section will likely be relegated to the closet along with a number of winter coats, I'm sure (its no wardrobe, I know). But its a first house. I can't say I've particularly earned the dream library just yet, but I'll be sure to let you know when the book deal hits. In the meantime I'll try to post pictures of the real room as soon as escrow closes.

Library Sightings

So I was thurling in the borogroves of the Cal State Long Beach library a few days ago and happened upon a volume that inspired the following blog-post. The volume below caught my eye momentarily as I was walking to another section of the library. The title took a few steps to register in my brain but it was enough to make me turn back and take a second look. It was entitled How to Collect Books by J. Herbert Slater. I found this title and the existence of the volume ironic for two reasons: only a proficient collector of books would happen to have this book on his shelf, and the book itself (published in 1905) has undoubtedly appreciated, at least slightly, by the very rules to be found in its leaves.

 As I thumbed through its pages, stopping here and there on pages displaying especially valuable binding types and illustrations of the tooled leather covers of a bygone era in bookmaking I began to recall some of my own inspirations for collecting books. I am by no means particularly discerning, at least when it comes to the market value of a particular book and the book pictured above seemed to focus mostly on shelf aesthetics.

In retrospect I am particularly aware of how my concept of a private library was formed. I have a bevy of images implanted in my brain, mostly from films like Beauty and the Beast (you all know which scene I'm talking about), The Pagemaster and The Addams Family (both films have undoubtedly implanted in my mind the small sliver of hope that the right book pulled from the shelf at the right time will quite literally come to life in my hands). Though fiction the libraries depicted there had a profound effect and having actually seen the private library of Thomas Edison (which I have had a hell of a time finding an actual picture of) made me think that such a dream was possible.

But there is one major issue inherent in such vast private collections: the simple fact that the more books one owns, the less likely it is that one has read them. I saw a perfect example of this my first year in college when a hallmate of mind took it upon himself to begin collecting books. Now the volumes with which his shelves were laden were typically those beautifully done printings by Barnes and Noble, often faux leather with gilded pages. I won't lie that I envied his collection as its contents were aesthetically pleasing and artistically valid. The one problem was that this particular student was a business major (I'm sorry to any of such ilk out there but these folk were notorious at my university for being meatheads; only one step above a Comm major *titter*). As a result, I would be surprised if the gilding of his copy of Plato has been cracked to this day unless by a curious houseguest.

This illustration in a way assuages my envy since, though my shelves are scattered with paperbacks, the contents are equally valid and more importantly, I can claim that I have read or intend to read (or at the very least understand) every single volume that I own. And that is a very comforting thought. In a world of Amazon and bargain used books I have learned that the content takes precedence over an unnecessarily high priced printing. Yet I still care enough for aesthetics to organize my collection in Dewey (sorry librarians, I'll need a few thousand more books for Library of Congress to be worth it) and to never, and I mean NEVER, break the spines on my paperbacks.
----
(bibliography info thanks to CSULB's Library Catalogue)
Slater, J. Herbert. How to Collect Books. London, G. Bell & sons, 1905.