Migratory books

Books' intrinsic portability means they are always on the move, always migratory, always displaced.

Emma Smith, Portable Magic

Most of us hate to throw out old books. Instead we give them away when are done with them. We donate them for library book sales. We take them to used book stores.

The condo library, which I oversee, depends upon this difficulty people have to throw out old books, even well-worn books. Instead they donate them to the library, providing "new" books for our shelves, while also leaving me with the responsibility of getting rid of older books. Most I donate for resale elsewhere. Some I must reluctantly recycle.

I hate to write in books, but wouldn't it be nice if each person left a record in each book owned? That is, we could write our name, along with the date the book was acquired and the date it was passed on. At one time, public libraries did something like this. Those who withdrew a book left their names and dates on the library card.

For some books, I think this trail might be very interesting. I own a number of books that were used when I got them. Who owned them before me? How far have these books traveled?

Emma Smith hints at this when she writes above about the portability of books, about their migratory nature. Books remain for years on one particular shelf, but then when their owners die or decide to downsize, they are passed on somebody else, and then perhaps to somebody else. The best books end up in collections, in university libraries, in museums.

Sometimes there have been attempts to save books by destroying them, photocopying them, digitizing them or whatever. Yet the books themselves, though made of paper, can last a very long time with proper care. Books hundreds of years old can still be read. Paper lasts much longer than modern media, which can become outdated within a few years.

If only we could know the history of old books.

Books are for reading

Those who collect books rarely read them. If they want to read the book, they will buy a cheap reading copy. They may not ever open the collectible. Any wear at all decreases its value.

It is something like the person who collects Star Wars action figures. A true collector never takes them out of their boxes. They are toys that are never played with.

This is how I knew I could never be a book collector, even though at one time I had several books worth a little bit of money. I owned a book because I wanted to read it. When I finally sold my first edition of A Is for Alibi for $1,000, the buyer wondered why it was so worn. To me it was never a collectible. I read it, and I loaned to other people to read.

At the same time, and this may sound contradictory, I acquire books I may want to read but know I am unlikely to ever read. But I don't own them because I expect them to increase in value. I own them because I like having them in my library. I like the thought that I might actually get around to reading them someday. I like the sight of them. I like owning them. Some books seem to make me smarter just by being on my shelves.

Perhaps this doesn't make sense. But then neither does keeping a Star Wars action figure in its box.

Books that help us

Emma Smith

All books are really self-help books.

Emma Smith, Portable Magic

Self-help books are, of course, a whole category books. They help us — or at least promise to help us — do almost anything: lose weight, improve our looks, build a deck, fight addiction, recover from divorce, whatever. But are all books, in a sense, self-help books, as Emma Smith suggests?

It is an interesting idea. We do, after all, read books to help us in some way, even if we only want to be entertained. We read a history book because we want to know more about that particular part of history. We read a biography because we want to know more about the person who is the subject of the biography.

The Bible is a self-help book. So is Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, The Sun Also Rises and Gone Girl.

Are there some books that are not self-help books? Probably. Reading some books can hurt us more than they help us. Some books are a total waste of time. Some books are so boring that we either never finish them or we remember nothing from them after we have finished. Some books can help one person but not another.

Most books, if not all books, can be seen as self-help books. Even so, it is good that most books are not categorized in that way. Leave that designation for the likes of these recent releases: Party for One: Perfectly Portioned Recipes Just for You and Just Diagnosed: A Survivor's Guide to Navigating Cancer.

The magic of books

 In Portable Magic (2022), Emma Smith writes about that little piece of magic that is called a book. It is partly a history of books and partly a collection of trivia about books.

She writes about why Marilyn Monroe liked to be photographed with books (right), especially intellectual books such as Ulysses; the moral questions involved in either publishing, selling or reading Hitler's Mein Kampf;  books bound with human skin, and book burning, among many other topics.

Sometimes she contradicts accepted wisdom. The Bible was not actually the first book Gutenberg printed on his printing press. Charles Dickens did not invent the modern Christmas with the publication of A Christmas Carol. More books are destroyed by those who publish them than by anyone else. (What did you think happened to the books the stores can't sell?)

Much of Smith's book is fascinating. Even more of it is deadly dull. One of the magical things about a book is that one is not required to read every word.

Secrets behind secrets

Everyone has secrets. In Chris Pavone's The Expats (2012), the levels upon levels of secrets could destroy a seemingly typical American family — or perhaps save it.

Dexter and Kate have two kids and what might seem like a settled life when Dexter tells his wife they are moving to Luxembourg. His job, which he has never been specific about, is taking him to that European banking capital to help a secret client improve its security.

Kate has her own secrets. Before she married Dexter, she was a CIA agent, who lived by her wits and sometimes survived by killing people. She thinks that life is behind her, even though she strangely misses it. Being a stay-at-home mother is kind of boring.

Then another American couple seems to force friendship upon them. Kate's suspicions lead her to the discovery that Bill and Julia are FBI agents investigating Dexter for possibly stealing millions.

But this is just the beginning of the secrets that keep unraveling right up to the end of this magnificent early novel from Pavone, who has gone on to become a major author of espionage thrillers.

Start with words

The sooner you put words on paper, the happier you will be.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

E.M. Forster

Jane Smiley above is talking about writing a novel, but her wisdom applies to many of us who write, even someone who is just writing a letter or an email. The sooner you put words on paper (or on your computer or phone screen), the happier you will be.

That's because rewriting is almost always easier than writing. Start with words, then find better words. I found this to be true when I was a newspaper reporter. When I didn't know how to start a news story, I just started the story. Soon enough it would become clear to me what was most important and how I should actually start it. Meanwhile, having something on paper made me feel better, even when I knew what I had written so far was garbage.

I have found this to be true in other kinds of writing, as well — newspaper columns, editorials, blog posts, sermons, emails, whatever.

"Writing is writing, not planning," Smiley writes. Not that there is anything wrong with planning. Writing comes easier when you know what you want to say before you begin. I have heard some novelists say they don't start writing until they have an outline. They must know the ending before they can start the beginning. Well, that's OK if that's what works for them.

Others of us have only a vague idea of what we want to write until we start writing. Novelist E.M. Forster said it best, I think: "How can I tell you what I think until I see what I say?"

Why people write

How do you explain the fact that so many people write books that are never published? Or they are published, perhaps even financed by the authors themselves, but read by almost no one?

Thousands of books are published each year, yet thousands more are written and unpublished, or started and never finished, or envisioned in someone's mind but never put down on paper. How many people say something like, "I could write a book ..."?

Alfred Kazin

Perhaps the answer to all such queries can be found in the words of literary critic Alfred Kazin: "In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself; to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax."

The actual publication of a book is, in so many instances, truly anticlimactic. This is probably not true of professional writers, those who actually make their living by writing books. If their books are not published, their families don't eat.

Yet for amateur writers — those who write books to see if they can, those who have a story that is burning inside them, those with ideas bursting to get out — the actual writing, not the illusive possibility of publication, is the true objective.