Today I spent an hour or so carrying boxes of books back and forth between the main house and the overflow house. Last spring I purchased four bookshelves to go in the dining room. At the time, I filled them with mystery hardcovers (mostly Susan's, but some mine) that had been overstocked and upstairs shelves. Then, in the summer, I began moving a couple of shelves' worth of books between the houses, replacing the mysteries with my horror, science fiction, comics, fantasy, and literary volumes that spoke to me. These are the books I'm more likely to read and re-read, to refer back to, and the revisit, so why not make that a convenient process.
So many friends. Book after book reminded me of an encounter, a conversation, a friendship, or a close kinship with the author. These aren't just words on paper. They're unchanging connections to people I have known, preserved in paper and fabric and leather. Some of the people are still with us today, some aren't—but on my bookshelves, they're always here.
Piers Anthony—sometimes erudite, sometimes conspiratorial, a man who smiled with his eyes.
Michael Bishop—a gentle, thoughtful soul whose intellect counterbalances his literary passion.
Isaac Asimov—Gregarious, confident, amiable, unpredictable, and always fascinating.
Jack Kirby—Engaging, kind, amiable, continually creative, and always looking ahead eagerly at his next project.
Philip K. Dick—Mercurial, intense, sometimes troubled, and never predictable.
Stan Lee—Self-effacing yet confident, brash, loquacious, but always eager to please and appreciative of the admiration of his fans.
Thomas Burnett Swann—Scholarly, refined, genteel, with a love for the written word more intense than I've ever seen in another writer.
Stephen King... Clive Barker... Philip Jose Farmer... Ray Bradbury... Robert A. Heinlein... E. Hoffman Price... L. Sprague de Camp... Greg Benford... Hal Clement... Kelly Freas... Michael Whelan... Jim Steranko... Neal Adams... Murphy Anderson... George Alec Effinger... Frank Miller... Each meeting with each of them lives on in the books on my shelves. I have no idea if I'll meet some of them in person again; others are no longer with us, so I will only know them through these books and the memories they bring back as I look at the books.
Why do I keep books? Friends live in those pages, that's why.
1 comment:
Mr. Biggers
I am glad to see you writing again. You made such an impact on so many of us that had the pleasure and honor of being in your classes. Though I do contribute my fetish with new technology gadgets on your influence.
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