My Bookshelf, Myself.

Posted on by Live & Learn

People have been arguing that print is dead, or about to be dead… It is not dead in this house. We write in books. We dogear pages and underline passages and draw little stars in the margins. To read a book after my husband has read it is to have a window into his curious and wide-ranging mind.

I’m aware that a novel is not a thing. A poem is not a thing. Whether a story or a poem or an essay or an argument comes in through your ears or your eyes or your fingertips doesn’t change the alchemy that happens in reading: the melding of writer and reader, one human heart in communion with another, and with all the others, past, present, and future, who have read the same book. That magic is unrelated to the delivery system of a text. It happens whenever and however a person reads.

Nevertheless.

I will always prefer a book I can hold in my hand, the kind that smells of paper and glue, the kind whose unfolding I control, no button or touchscreen involved, by flipping backward and forward with pages ruffling between my fingers. The physicality of it pleases me. I listen to audiobooks on solo road trips, but I always switch back to the physical book as soon as I unpack. Reading a book on paper feels slower — calmer, stiller — than encountering any digital text.

For me, a book made of paper will always be a beautiful object that warms a room even as it expands (or entertains, or challenges, or informs, or comforts) a mind, and a bookcase will always represent time itself. I walk past one of our bookcases, and I can tell you exactly why a particular book is still there, never culled as space grew limited, even if there is no chance I’ll ever read it again.

When I reread a book from my own shelves, I meet my own younger self. Sometimes my younger self underlined a passage that I would have reached for my pencil to underline now. Other times she read right past a line that stuns me with its beauty today. I am what I have read far more surely than I am what I have eaten.

— Margaret Renkl, from “In Praise of Overstuffed Bookshelves” (NY Times, August 26, 2024)

43 thoughts on “My Bookshelf, Myself.”

  1. I have no doubt that there are many who share the view that the printed book with blurbs on the inside cover and acknowledgements on the back, are transportive. Sitting in Barnes and Noble, with a coffee and a comfy chair is truly my happy place. The Kindle is great, but doesn’t lend itself to a more romantic response. I am sure I’m not alone in feeling this way

    2. Lucky you, Mimi, to still have an active Barnes and Noble where you can order coffee and read in a public comfy chair…like a library with home comforts. Our local Barnes and Noble was extremely popular but closed, and moved around the large mall to a smaller store…never the same. I even gave talks in the old, and much larger one. Ah-h memories!

  2. I absolutely love this post. Nothing beats a hardcover book! Though I must admit I have gotten lazy and my primary book source is now audiobooks. (Shhhhhhh! It’s a secret!)

    And I agree with Mimi. Sitting in a comfortable chair in a good bookstore with a good cup of coffee…priceless!

  4. Dear Klaus
    What a great text.
    By the way, it’s a myth that books are an endangered species. At least in Europe, bookshops are doing better than other high street shops. It’s not an either-or books or digital media. They coexist pretty well together.
    Thanks for sharing this text
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

  5. I love the feel of a book unless it is one of those big ones you could use for weightlifting. I remember my wrist aching when I read Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy.” But besides that, I was horrified that the author in your post would dogear pages and write in the book. That goes so much against the reverence for books that my mother taught me. Also, in support of Kindles, one thing I have learned is that I am never without a book to read, and I make a point of opening a new one whenever I finish the last one, just so I always have a book on the go. Yes, Kindle has its drawbacks, but for me, the benefits far outweigh them. In the end, we each have to go with what makes us feel good.

    2. Thanks for saying that you are not in favor of writing inside a book. I was thinking that maybe I have a character flaw because writing, even underlining, in a book offends my fastidiousness (!). [Although when I was 3, I would write whatever letters I knew in a few of my parents’ books–somehow I thought that was where to write! Thankfully I was never scolded for that.]

      1. My mother always reminded her kids that books were something close to holy and had to be treated with respect. It was a really bad thing to deface a book with writing in it. To this day I treasure books and hate to see them defaced. I suppose people who like to write in books don’t think of it as defacing it, but to me, that’s what it is. But we each have our own thoughts on that.

  6. Well. I have to admit…. I LOVE having a physical book, the weight of it, the newness of it, the dog earring (some say this is a crime) of the pages….

    But over the summer I was strong armed into trying a kindle. I was not expecting the adoration I found for the simplicity of it. The number of books you can “carry” or read at a time.

    But truth? I’m just happy people are still reading at all.

    Whatever avenue you use? Go for it.

  7. I’m a lover of paper and ink, though I also listened to many audiobooks during my years of commuting I love story, I love information, I love the creative mind, I love learning, I love the beauty of words. It is so interesting to consider why we choose the books we choose to keep, and those we choose to pass on.

  8. I hope print is not dea in my lifetime. I was so shocked last week when I met a new doctor and the entire office works on paper. I couldn’t beleive it but it did make me think of my career and life before computers and phones with cameras and the ability to text. Hell, I remember pagers and my expensive and heavy bag phone. :0

  9. Amen! I read ebooks when I travel but I never enjoy the experience as much as having the paper copy in hand. It is a last resort for me.

  10. so many wonderful comments. This post made me truly happy. I‘m a ‚real book‘ person too. I had phases of adding notes, putting post-its everywhere, then no longer…. I still haven‘t got a kindle because this is to me a last help before eternal darkness.
    But what I do now is having newspaper articles read to me. We have ‚the‘ paper I specifically ordered upon our return to Switzerland because their German is flawless (not so much the robot voice pronouncing names and places terribly wrong – Biden is once ‚Biden‘, 2 sentences on it‘s Bedden…) – I bring books to ‚open libraries‘ where- and whenever I can. Renkl is one heck of a writer!

    1. Kiki, thanks for sharing. What app/service do you have newspaper articles read to you? I haven’t found anything that I find acceptable and non-robotic?

      1. Dave, it‘s the newspaper‘s robot…. not an actual device you buy. you subscribe to the paper in e-form or/and on actual paper and once you‘re signed in, you can read about 80% of their posts. Helpful for ppl like me – AND I can do some other work besides and still stay informed. Sometimes though I have to listen to it 3 times because I got distracted by my other doings….

  11. Yes! Oh yes! In a moment of madness after a brain event a few years ago, I gave away 3/4 of my books because I didn’t think I would be able to read again. Now I’m madly buying them again. The only way to read, a book in my hand.

  12. i like a kindle for books i have no interest in keeping (which is a lot since i read a lot of books). but the books i love?– these are treasures and deserve space in my heart and on my shelf. <3

  13. I feel like so much of me is in my books (even though I don’t mark them up!). I get the most excited about used books, partly because I like to imagine what kind of person/people would have read them previously, and what it is that connects me to those people, that drew me to the same books… Can’t say I ever think the same things about digital books.

  16. I feel like I have changed, too. I do have a Kindle and the app on my phone.

    A word is a word in any shape or form. Even if it was a tattoo on someone’s ankle.

    I miss borrowing and exchanging books with friends. And getting to see their notes!

  17. I was visiting our daughters kindergarten class on the day the teacher was talking to the children about how precious books are…using a green, hardback book, she showed the children, how to open them, take care of them and to be sure to place the book carefully into their assigned place on the shelve…it taught them care, responsibility & reverence.

    Books should be a part of everyone’s, life…

    When we were a young married couple…the little rental house,had a turnover…one of the young men who stayed there off and on…didn’t know how to read! I tried to help him and then I suggested that he go to the library as they had a free reading for adults. I don’t know if he ever learned to read, I sure hope so…// A young married couple with two children on an infant had very low level ability to read…one day she asked me if I knew how to sew? She was having a hard time following the instructions as she only knew a few words and she did well following the illustrations….with a little help from me she did a nice job sewing an item of clothing for her oldest. She had to have the pharmacists go over the instructions for administering the RX’s’s for her children. She was a caring parent..I hope she learned to read, fluently…this was in the early 1980’s.

    I know that If both of these individuals did learn to read their world would open up….So many in this world have never seen a book, held a book, owned a book or had someone read a book to them…I hope they took the challenge to work hard and learn to read…and discovered the “Wonder” among the pages…

    1. It’s hard to imagine today that anyone does not know how to read, yet there are. Sad really. Thanks for sharing your memories Christie. I was flooded with gratitude in being able to see and to read. Happy Sunday.

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