Beyond all defensiveness, our discussion of unread books offers a privileged opportunity for self-discovery, akin to that of autobiography, to those who know how to seize it. In these conversations, whether written or spoken, language is liberated from its obligation to refer to the world and, through its traversal of books, can find a way to speak about what ordinarily eludes us.
Beyond the possibilities of self-discovery, the discussion of unread books places us at the heart of the creative process, leading us back to its source. To talk about unread books is to be present at the birth of the creative subject. In this inaugural moment when book and self separate, the reader, free at last from the weight of the words of others, may find the strength to invent his own text, and in that moment, he becomes a writer himself.” —Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read
This blog is about my somewhat solitary but conceivably social interest in finding, buying, and owning books, never mind any particular attempt at comprehensive critique thereof, undertaken in full, unashamed acknowledgment that I haven’t read all these books, or even most of them, and I probably never will.
Don’t look for traditional reviews here. I do sometimes review books professionally, and I may link to some of my own and others for various reasons, but by the very definition of newsworthiness, those are all recently published, and journalistic reviews rarely have the room or assume the interest that would accommodate the broadest ramblings of the full-bore book geek, which is what we’re about here.
The world is full of books published anytime but recently, and unless they’ve found a place in the literary canon or the collectibles shelf, there’s hardly any place (that I’m aware of) to talk about them on their own marginal and personally associative merits. I love books as bargains, as found objects, as art, as showcases for fine writing, as places to print pictures, as curiosities, as artifacts, as gifts given and received, as heirlooms, as signifiers of projected self-image, as remembrances of people and places, and as furniture. I find them at garage sales, Goodwills, and used-book stores.
I post my finds here, new and old, as they interest me and as I can get around to them, on something of the same theory that led me so long ago to spend so many wasted college evenings in dorm rooms or off-campus apartments splitting $20 bags of fun with similarly inclined friends and manically ogling each others’ fledgling libraries. My kind of fun.
If anyone’s got anything to share — about the fonts, the blurbs, the weight of the paper, the author who hit on you at that Barnes & Noble reading, that copy you lost on that bus trip to Portland and never could find again, whatever — this would be a good place to do that.
P.S. If you’ve looked at the blog lately, you’ll have noticed that while it hasn’t abandoned what it started out to do, it has migrated at its edges to other stuff, including links to published work, amateur photography, and river trips accounts, often interrelated.
