When I was a tiny child, just learning how to write my name, I wrote it in the front of a book. Not just once to mark the book as mine, mind you, but over and over again. The inside cover was decorated with elephants, hooked trunk-to-tail, snaking back and forth across the inside cover and facing page. I allowed my name to follow those elephants, sometimes writing it backwards, curving around, coming back the right way again. When my mother saw it, I got into more trouble than I had been in before in my young life, which is saying something. That was the moment I learned books were sacred objects, to be valued, treasured, protected, and never, ever defaced.
I learned that writing in books, just for the sake of writing in books, was bad. Evil. Wrong. A sin. Okay, I probably didn't get in quite that much trouble, but it definitely made an impression on my young mind. That's one of the reasons I was aghast when I finally made it to college and discovered that it was standard, and considered wise and a good way to study, to actually write in your books. That struck me as just wrong, like a priest telling you to have sex before marriage. It took forever for me to overcome that belief that writing in books was inherently bad. I still have a hard time writing in hardcover books, especially when it's something big and hefty like the complete works of Shakespeare. In those cases, I sometimes purchase a cheap paperback to use when I know I need to make extensive notes in addition to the really nice hardcover.
This is probably what led, in part, to the conversation with my not-quite-stepfather's sister-in-law the other day. We were celebrating the not-quite-stepfather's birthday at a restaurant when the sister-in-law, who is basically a nice woman, looked at my mother and said, "If you have any old books, ones with green or red covers, that you pick up at auction, will you give them to me?"
I turned to her, without thinking or hesitating, and said, "If she has any old books that she's giving away, I'd have dibs."
The sister-in-law looked at me in surprise. "I'm not planning on reading them," she said. "I just want to use them as decorations."
I stared at her. Images of home improvement shows where they cut off the spines of old books to decorate furniture or drilled through stacks of books to make lamp bases running through my head. "I would have dibs," I repeated.
She continued to stare at me. I could see the wheels turning. Why on earth, I could almost see her thinking, would I want some old books? She knew I didn't have a home to decorate. What use would they be to me?
"She's right," my mother said. "If I were getting rid of any books, she would have first choice."
The sister-in-law returned to her food, but I could sense that she did not get the import of what she had asked. She, in her mind, did not seem to think she had asked for anything valuable. If there were some old books in a box that my mother or my not-quite-stepfather happened to pick up at auction, why would they want them? What good would they be to them? It's not like they were valuable.
And that's the thing. To me, to my mother, to our family, books are valuable. They have an innate value not as objects but for the knowledge and information and stories that are contained inside them. We freely borrow books with one another, but even amongst our own family, we do not ask for books to just be given to us. To do so would be to rob our own bloodline of something priceless. And that's just not right.
How do you and your family value books?
6 comments:
Books are sacred to me. I was a junior or senior before I'd finally mark a college textbook. Even then, I still had a hard time with it.
Notes in the margins? Pfft! Forget about it.
But textbooks are different. I used yellow highlighter in my Geometry, Algebra, and Structural Engineering books when I was in school. Of course, I still have them, and until computers came into their own I used them daily.
Now I use them when I need to write up a program or formula. The highlighter makes it easy for me to find pertinent imformation.
I never wrote in the books, I used post-it notes and notepaper...BUT, it was only partially because of the inate desire not to mark up books, and more because there's not enough space in margins in textbooks. I need more room. So I would write out what I had to say to myself, long or short, in notebooks (and sometimes then footnote it with a post-it note, for easy reference). Marking in a textbook just leaves me with a cryptic little note that I never decipher again.
I think I was about a junior or senior before I would really mark in a literary book, too, Tori. (Not talking books that are just designed as textbooks here, Rllg.) These days, I scrawl in the margins with the best of them and only wish for wider margins because, as Pete indicated, sometimes it can be hard to decipher. My mother likes to borrow my books after the semester ends and sometimes she comes to me to find out what I'd written. I don't think I've ever not been able to tell her. I've tried the post-it routine, but they're not much better than margins in my opinion and they have a tendency to get knocked out of place so the note isn't in the right spot.
I was always hestitant to write in the margins or mark up books because I never knew if I was going to change my mind later, then want to change what I'd written - and you can't do that without then mucking up the book and making a mess. I like books neat and tidy :)
If my late father taught me anything it was books are sacred, but they are sacred because they contain knowledge and they expand your worldview. I treat books with great respect and I yell at my kids if I see them carelessly handling them.
But my father also taught me that writing in books is OK. There are many books that I've read where I've made comments in the margin, things like, "I agree!" or "This is exactly how I feel." or "Nonsense!"
Why write in the book? Because books are a personal thing. What one book means to me will mean something else to you. What that book means to me at 25 will mean something else again at 50. Writing in the margin is a way to track your throughts through time on what you believe.
It's just all part of the learning process, of discoverying who we are.
Now if I saw you propping up a table with a book, I'd get upset, but if I saw you writing in it? I'd smile and nod knowingly that you were discovering the world.
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