No matter how many books you own, I have a hunch you have one special shelf that holds your most cherished volumes.
For example, I have a lawyer bookcase with glass panels that contains a prized signed statuette of John Wooden, clay hand imprints my son and daughter made in kindergarten, and other such keepsakes. A different shelf within proudly displays 20 moss-green hardcover 1922 editions of Mark Twain’s works and an 1884 printing of “Red-Letter Poems By English Men And Women” with 648 gilt-edged pages featuring a Who’s Who lineup that includes Shakespeare, Byron, Browning (both Robert and Elizabeth), Keats, Donne, Milton, Tennyson and Wordsworth.
Despite their age, none of the above volumes are of great monetary value – yet all 21 are priceless personally because they belonged to my maternal grandfather and are the lone survivors from the inheritance of his vast book collection, the rest having been lost in the Thomas Fire that claimed my father’s home.
Family ties are behind two more special shelves belonging to dear friends of mine.
Kay Giles, easily one of the most well-read people I know, not surprisingly has upwards of 2,000 books in her home – among them 16 volumes that merit their very own top shelf in a prominently displayed bookcase. They are the full collection of Charles Dickens’ works, a special edition circa 1930, handsomely bound in rich walnut-brown leather with gold lettering on the pristine spines.
Most importantly, they belonged to Kay’s paternal grandparents and she calls them her “dearest inheritance.”
“My dad packed them up from his parents’ house in London when he went back there to take care of their affairs after my grandmother died,” Kay remembers, noting she was 16 years old at the time.
Houston Wolf was even younger when his father brought home a set of books that would similarly become dear to him, a 1952 printing of “The Great Books of the Western World”, a whopping 54 volumes that weigh about as much as a grand piano. Humble in appearance with cloth covers in a rainbow of hues – blue, green, red and gold, all faded by time – the books came with an equally modest waist-high wooden bookcase, the middle shelf now sagging slightly under its load.
“I’m so proud to think that I’ve carted these books around with me wherever I’ve moved for nearly forty years,” Houston shares, noting there have been many, many moves. “I’m also proud I never sold them, even in periods of desperation – at least what I considered to be desperation at the time. These books, and the knowledge I knew I’d someday absorb, were my security blanket. As long as I had these books, my life would be okay. I would always have something to live for, if just to protect these books.
“At my very lowest,” he continues, “I was offered $500 for the set. I couldn’t do it. Then the same gentleman then offered me $500 for ONE book from the set – Plotinus, Volume No. 17. I’ll never, ever read Plotinus, probably. I don’t even know who he is. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it to a set of books that deserved to remain intact. So I refused. And I really could have used that $500.”
Here’s the kicker: Houston confesses he hasn’t read any of his beloved books!
“So why do I keep them?” he says. “Pride in having taken care of them all these years. And ambition to someday read them.”
To paraphrase Robert Browning: Ah, a To-Be-Read shelf should exceed one’s grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com