bibliotaphantastic!

Hi. My name is Chelsea G. and I am addicted to books.

Technically, and if I’m going to be surgically honest with myself, what I am is a bibliotaph. I’d like to consider myself more a bibliophile, a person who loves books, but really, what I am is a person who hoards them. (I suppose being a book hoarder is better than being a bibliophobe, one who fears books, and possibly better than being a bibliophage, literally one who eats them, metaphorically one who reads consumptively.) I may also be a bibliomaniac, one with an excessive fondness for reading and books, but really what I am at my core is an obsessive accumulator of books. I imagine my posthumous self in Dante's underworld eternally pushing a giant library cart overloaded with tomes, shouting Hoard Them! Hoard Them! into an infinite black void.

Last month, I decided my new intellectual obsession would be the demimondaine, that fringe society of courtesans and their men of fin-de-siècle Paris and London. I bought five books. I’ve read none of them. Last week, I bought seven new books: Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado, which has been touted and introduced by my friend Terry Teachout; Volumes I and II of the graphic novel Ex Machina; Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, a biography of the delectably scrawny rocker; M.F.K. Fisher’s Sister Age, a memoir by the great food writer that’s less about food; and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, another graphic novel that won all kinds of awards. (Oh, and my friend O has sent me two books, one of which I left on Fire Island, the other of which, Molly Keane's Good Behaviour, I'm reading now and enjoying. And of course I bought and read, twice, Harry Potter 7.)

I suppose in the interest of full disclosure I should also confess that I’ve also ordered, but not yet received, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks as well as the following DVDs: Blue Velvet (Special Edition); Finding Neverland; and Season One of Heroes. I also bought Cinderella: A Case Book, but that’s for teaching, so it hardly counts. And I suppose I should also admit that I bought Ghost World in both book and DVD forms, as well as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Good Night and Good Luck, and Thank You For Smoking. Aside from a couple of other books (Peter Pan; The Engravings of Hogarth; The Selected Letters of Joyce; Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, and Watchmen, another graphic novel. And also the first two seasons of Angel, as well as those of X-Files. And a subscription to The New Yorker.)

But that’s it, I swear. (Except I also bought a subscription to Vanity Fair, but that came with the subscription to The New Yorker, so it hardly counts.)

I should in this multi-media confessional also take this time to come clean about my recent iTunes shopping spree. I fell in love with Stars’ Set Yourself On Fire, and, really, who wouldn’t? That somehow led to my purchasing of Bat For Lash’s excellently eldritch Fur and Gold. In a mania of music, I also ended up buying a big fistful of Allman Brothers and Pink Floyd. I just felt guilty for never having given either band a chance. Which led to picking and choosing a few select 70’s gems like David Essex “Rock On” and Journey’s “Wheel In the Sky.” Watching Heroes, which I downloaded, made me buy a bunch of Rogue Wave, naturally; one could say it opened my eyes, if not my ears. Then yesterday I discovered Rodrigo Y Gabriela incendiary eponymous disc and bought it for myself. And also for two other friends. Which is pretty much all the music I've recently acquired. Except for the stuff I got from quasi-legal file sharing. But why mention it (Ben Lee’s Against Me! New Wave and all kinds of Yewknee)? It was free.

The thing of it is that sometimes I just get overwhelmed by the need for books (and DVDs and music). It’s as if without the weight of enough paper and bindings and that sweetly scented glue,  my tenuous connection to this mortal plane will fragment and dissolve. I will, unbalanced by a proper counterweight of media, become untethered from this spinning wet planet and, I fear, be flung into space. Sometimes I think it’s only books that keep me here.

You understand, then, my need to accumulate them, to pile them in teetering heaps on cases and on ledges, in piles next to my bed, on any flat surface, really. You can feel the fear, can you not, of what will happen to me if I don’t have anything new to read? You can sense, can you not, the great shuddering unfathomable blackness of being unable to find that right book when I need it? That best song? That perfect DVD? You know this untenable  experience of that particular existentialist crisis, I know you do.

There are others who do not. My boyfriend, for one. He has surveyed my apartment, my four book cases crammed from top to bottom with lovely, lovely, shiny spines of lovely, lovely books, and he has suggested the unthinkable. “Why don’t you get rid of some?” he has asked. “When was the last time you’ve read Wheelock’s Latin?” he has asked. While it has been some time, I admit, since I’ve opened Wheelock’s Latin, what if I should want to? What if tossed the book and then I needed to find out how to conjugate Edere or Fieri? Where would I be then? No, I cannot part with the book, as much as I loathe Latin, and I do.

My cupboards can be bare. My refrigerator may hold nothing but duck sauce and capers. My clothes closet may have nothing but stuff I wore in 1987. My bank account may run Sahara sere. But please don’t let me run out of books. Lovely, lovely, dusty, papery-smelling books. My bibliotherapy. My little friends, my little treasures, my precious.

Comments

[Paul Karasik]

I hope that when my book, "I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks", arrives that it meets your expectations. I have been astonished by the reception. The first edition completely sold out within three weeks! We are now awaiting the arrival of the second edition.

If your readers are unfamiliar with Hanks' work, I urge them to wander over to my website, go to the BONUS page and see the slideshow of a Fantomah story that does NOT appear in the book:

www.fletcherhanks.com

Thanks,
-Paul Karasik

[MJ]

I still have Wheelock's Latin too (though I loved Latin). Also have the advanced and ecclesiastical Latin books that I've never used or opened - because, you know, someday...

[JamnTurtl]

Only four bookcases? bah.. you're a book-hoarding baby! Love your blog.... thanks always for sharing.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jamnturtl

Heidi

[Stan]

I understand completely. I have lots of books, and many years ago my wife gave up suggesting that I get rid of any of them.

But I feel for you. I know what apartments are like in New York, and it must be hard to find space for the books. In the wide-open spaces of Los Angeles it's not that hard to have a decent-sized place that can hold lots of books. And maybe a spouse and kid, too.

[Chelsea]

Reading this, sitting on the couch next to a pile of twelve books, newly-arrived from Amazon, which I haven't even opened yet, wanting to draw out the thrill of "New Books!" for as long as possible, I completely understand. Bibliotaph, indeed. Thank you for the word!

[chelsea g. summers]

Oh goody. I'm glad not to be so all alone. And I'd just like to add in my defense that many of the books were purchased by me from Amazon Used, with I love with a white=hot flamey passion.

Thanks for letting me know I'm one of an illustrious crowd.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[Bad Kitty]

Mmm, books. Used books, new books; any kind of books. . . about 4 months ago I said that I was really going to do it, and I boxed up the stuff that I thought was commercially viable and I was really going to take them all to sell, all 8 boxes. . . they're still sitting there. Beside the 6 bookshelves spilling over with the un-commercially viable stuff, the sentimental stuff, and the new books I bought to console myself because I was selling my books. :-)

[Orv]

Just twice in my life, at the strenuous urging of family and spouse, wanting to prove myself a man and all, just twice, I culled my bookshelves and took a couple of bags of slightly less loved books back to the used bookstore (whence many of them had come), for cash or credit towards more books (duh, guess which I picked). I felt like heel. Like a girlyman. Like a deadbeat dad. Like Sophie in Sophie's Choice. Worse.

Nonoteveragain. I love them, in the boxes and boxes in my basement, in the shelves double and triple stacked and wedged, in the bathroom, on every surface I can find. The wife keeps a running counterinsurgency campaign, but Bush is doing far better in Iraq than she is in my house.

The first thing I do when I visit someone's house is look at their books. I see a house without books, I kind of want to edge out of there as quick as I can. But someone with whole racks of books of odd kinds and different tastes that I haven't seen yet, ooh. Please tell me you have to slip into the kitchen or take a shower or something or other: I will gaze deeply into your bookshelves, I will stroke them and lovingly up and down the spine and slip them in and out of their place in the shelf, and then slide them in and out again, and then open them slowly and widely and bend down to smell that little bit at the end where the spine gapes over the spread pages, and even read the ISBN closely, and then I will fantasize about secreting them about my person and trying to smuggle them out the door into captivity in my basement where I will slowly flip through pliant pages and... is it getting hot in here?

I once had the very best job in the world. Sure, it paid terrible and was boring as hell and subject to an awful bureaucracy, but I got to be the return/shelving clerk in a university library. It was like being paid to do blow. Then they brought out the crystal meth and put me in charge of the Reserve Section (complete editions of de Sade, the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, everything by Burroughs, original printings of the Decameron & Tarzan, the Anarchist's Cookbook, and so on), goddamn I was almost catatonic before long, probably the worst librarian in history, I just HATED passing my lovelies along into the greasy grasping hands of lame grad students and sleazy professors. I didn't quite get fired, just moved on to a real life with no little regret.

I am a proud biblio just about everything.

[badinfluencegirl]

um you know... i have shelves and boxes of books that i haven't read yet and i just keep buying more. in my defence i read a lot of the new ones but some of the used ones stay in the input queue for a looooong time.

stars are awesome
check out mother mother, dala, nathan rogers and cachoito lopez :)
i mean if you want to

[Rich]

Oh, I have hundreds. They are mostly in storage, except for the fifty or so here in the room and the dozen or two at work in my office. I just wish I had the money I spent on the books to afford the space to put them in.

It's very comforting to have books. Sometimes I just go to the bookstore because it makes me calmer. But, the problem is the temptation. It's taken me years to leave a bookstore without purchasing a book.

We should all go in together and buy a building for a library. Then we could afford to keep our books in a safe place that didn't cost too much and we could see them whenever we wanted. Except that you're on the other coast, so it would have to be a very long library.

[angell]

Well, I can totally relate. I have all sorts of books around the house in just about every category - some I haven't read yet, most I have. When the husband looks at me and says "Honey, you know that pile of books in the corner? Well, it just fell over and buried the cat AGAIN." I just look at him and say "So re-stack them."

My books are my babies, and nary a one shall I abandon.

Chelsea--

I loved this post, and I can totally relate. I have close to three thousand books in something like 65 cardboard boxes from Staples in storage. A couple of years ago my partner made me do something about the situation, since our bedroom was starting to look like a library had exploded in it. He made an excell spreadsheet for me so that I could catalogue them all and know which book was in which box.I still buy new books on the sly all the time, and have a list of about ten books that I want to buy right now. Color me happy though, because my brother-in-law started working at a bookstore this summer, and I am forcing him to use his discount to buy books for me. Thanks for a great post, and looking forward to seeing you soon.

Tom

[Lucy Felthouse]

I totally sympathise. I'm the same. I am a totally compulsive book buyer. I bought 13 in two days once. And I must have at least 60 I haven't read yet. I will get round to them, but who knows when!?

[Monica]

Oh, yes, I can relate. I just moved, and so I confronted the many that live in a closet and don't get opened or displayed regularly (but they need to stay!). I haven't counted them all, but I know there are at least 1500, and they're bloody heavy. Some came to me new, most used, many were even "rescues," from library sales that were going to throw away or incinerate the poor dears.

Truthfully, I think that as addictions go, books are a pretty healthy one. Was it Erasmus or Montaigne who said "When I get a little money, I buy books, and then if there is some left over, I buy food and clothes."

[Travon Boykins]

As the owner of 700+ DVDs (and who knows how many books/CDs before lost due to moves/lent out/stolen), I know what you mean. Maybe not anchoring me down but more of a testament of who I am and what I enjoy (or at least attempts to find out what I like). Muah love.

[norby]

Homes are meant to be filled with books. My shelves are full and I four piles of books waiting to be read. My wish list on Amazon is five pages long, mostly books. I believe we get more intelligent with each book we read.

[MonMouth]

I don't get it. Why wouldn't you choose books etc. over this year's autumn fashions, or whatever?

I have two pairs of trousers, wash one while I wear the other along with t-shirts, socks and underwear I buy in large plastic-wrapped discount packages, and my kitchen cupboards are always dry as the Sahara - all my food is of the "just add water" variety. All you need for a balanced diet is a reliable discount supermarket, running water and a microwave.

Honestly, what is the problem here?

[lydia]

Yeeees, you are so right. I feel the need to print out this post for my therapist so she can truly understand my obsession. I have been buying some rather ridiculous and embarrassing quantities of books from Ebay and Amazon Used, myself, lately... I looove looking at the bursting bookcases, the sweet piles of them on tables and windowsills... the excess makes me feel safe... they are, for me, like an autistic child's weighted vest...

[sweat shop sissy]

My weakness is dusty old book stores. The more cluttered and disorganized (or organized in a way that only the owner can understand) the better. Funny thing; I never take any books back to the 2nd hand books stores. My fave for the summer was Memoirs of a Geisha. A few months ago I stumbled across The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore. I loved the title. And the back cover copy:

The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally - well, to be accurate, artificially - business is booming at the local blues bar.

Cheers,

sss

[Curvaceous Dee]

Oh, yes - I can empathise with this. We have 11 large bookcases, as well are various piles around the computer desk, by the bed, in the lounge etc...

I've been putting mine on LibraryThing since last year, and somehow I'm always buying/acquiring more before I get the chance to finish adding the current ones :)

xx Dee