Books vs. money

Why would anyone prefer banknotes to books?

Katarina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Katarina Bivald

Again and again in Michael Dirda's Browsings, he returns to the sentiment felt by one of the characters in Katarina Bivald's novel, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend. At one point, Dirda puts it like this: "It's true that even $5 book purchases do add up. Yet what, after all, is money? It's just this abstraction, a number, a piece of green paper. But a book — a printed volume, not some pixels on a screen — is real. You can hold it in your hand. Feel its heft. Admire its cover."

Elsewhere he writes, "One thing never does change: the books you really covet always cost more than you want to pay for them. But, to borrow a phrase that women use of childbirth, the pain quickly vanishes when you finally hold that longed-for baby, or book, and know that it is yours forever."

As someone who has probably spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on book purchases over the years, I know this feeling very well. Yet I have also experienced it from the other side of the equation.

Last year a move from a house to a condo forced the sale of more than half of my vast library, including many of my most prized titles on the assumption, not always realized, that they would bring in the most money at auction. Now the missing books are like a hole in my life, while the money is just money. It will help me pay for the dental implants I need, but so what? It's just money, and they're just teeth. But books are worth something.