BUYING MORE BOOKS THAN YOU CAN READ IN A LIFETIME: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Well, the obvious answer to that puzzler is to live for all time. I’ll see what I can do about that one. If you reach the end of time and I am not there, you can sue me. That is, supernaturally, if you have the time to sue, at the end of all time.
   With the number of books on my shelves, it is time to contemplate mortality. How many unread books are on my shelves? And how much time is left, in which to read them?
   The rules are many and harsh. Cut and bruised, here’s one to live by. A book comes into the house and I read it. Sounds bone simple. That bitter rule is one I had to add to all the other fucking rules…
   Do not place bookshelves downstairs or on the stairs. Only hardback cookery books are acceptable in the kitchen. Never place paperback crime novels there, where they will wilt.
   If you find yourself with a copy of Hemingway, give that book to someone who likes Hemingway. In this way, you perform two good deeds in the same breath.
   Duplicate books are acceptable if one book is a gift from a friend.
   Books without covers or functioning spines should be stored where no more harm can come to them. Preferably with a dose of smelling-salts nearby.
   Set books down on surfaces lower than yourself. If you set a library copy of Graham Greene above you on a chest of drawers by the bedside come the end of an evening’s reading, you are at risk of squashing a spider which has no way out of that situation.
   The struggle is real. And by that, I mean the struggle to remove spider guts from Our Man in Havana before innocently returning it to the town library. My hardback copy is, as of this moment, spider-free.
   Try to return/retrieve borrowed books, even though accidents of space and time may prevent this. There is a law of physics which dictates that you should have at least one key in your possession that fits no known lock. I fear this may also apply to books on your shelves that you don’t recall purchasing or being given.
   You should have no need to write a witty, humorous, though biting and acerbic letter asking after the location of borrowed books. At worst, do this once in your lifetime. If the books are returned, call that a win. And never lend to that individual again.
   With space in short supply, put books where they fit in. The alphabet has no place in my library.
   There are other rules, many and varied, that I’ll remember in time not available to me as I type this short blog. But back to the harsh rule. When a book comes into the house, read it. Then the laws of physics kick in, and all that good intent goes to hell in a handbasket.
   Buying books in bulk as the result of sales…this is a good thing and saves you money. But then there is the pesky matter of reading the damned things. For reasons known to the Literary Gods alone, a sudden wall of books deeply resists reading. When books come, they come not single spies. I’m staring at the Big Battalions, now. And apathy is on the side of the Big Battalions.
   If I chip away here, there, reading a lone volume or two, I’ll complete whole runs of shelving. As usual, your reading fancy doesn’t take you in the direction of plugging a gap. You read what you want to read.
   Here, then, are the books we must read. Or try to read, before the end. We are all some way short of the books we must read if we play with the traffic. Yes, one careless driver could take a swipe in my direction and block my reading plans permanently.
   We don’t know how much time we have. To spend that time reading books, for a writer, is a necessity and not a luxury. I certainly know how much space I have, and must base my reading plans on that alone.
   Let’s get into the statistics. Top shelf, directly in front of me. The top of a bookcase is a shelf all to itself. Wide books, boxed sets, act as their own bookends. This is not always possible or desirable as an arrangement. And so, I use slim metal bookends here, there, to provide the illusion of support.
   Statistics. I count 21 books on that top shelf. Six to go.
   Next shelf down. There are 25 tomes there. Some I’ve read before, but these are my copies now and not library books, so I want to read them again. Completely unread books, though. Why, there’s but one. Nat Hawthorne’s story of THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES.
   As soon as I decide to read that, I’ll have suddenly read an entire shelf and, with one mighty bound, I shall leap free. It’s deciding to read Hawthorne that’s the clincher.
   Next shelf…
   The reference shelf. Books I built up, over the centuries. I still use them, even if it is quicker to type into a search engine than to stand and lean forward to consult a volume. In that way, I avoid researching the same five sentences everyone else has read on Wikipedia. As for reading books…
   Research books are designed to be dipped into, and need never be finished or read all the way through. However…
   I’ve read exactly one dictionary from start to fart, and that’s The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. True, I wish I could unread the thing, but that’s beyond my powers. If I could feel glad at any author’s disappearance, why, it would be that of Ambrose Bierce. Vanishing tends to limit the literary output.
   There is the spectre hovering over us that old Ambrose may one day return from out of the mists of time. Should he do so, he should do so while strictly retired from writing. Sadly, he’d be 180 years old and – as writers never retire – I’m sure he’d have a few things to type up on the topic of longevity.
   Given an intervening television, I must stand to count the 23 volumes on the lowest shelf containing books. There are electronic computer-related gadgets in the depths, and no books survive down there on the ocean floor. Here’s the tricky thing…
   Staring at this unread shelf, I know I’ve read a few books there. One or two, I am not so sure of. And I have a decent memory. I wonder, if I take a book off that shelf, will I find a slip of paper within? Showing my progress. Not a bookmark…
   Yes, a bookmark.
   But not a rectangular piece of cardboard.
   How do you mark progress in a book? You absolutely do not bend the corner of a page. (Given time, I am recalling more book rules.) And no, you don’t use a highlighter. Them’s fightin’ words. I have books in my collection that were dog-eared by other hands. And yes, there’s highlighting in there, too.
   You buy a book for 10p at the used book place, well, you gets what you pays for. Coffee circles and nicotine thrown in free of charge.
   I’ve always found bookmarks tricky. And usually…they are not required. Books that come with ribbons as bookmarks – yes, I have plenty of those. And I never use any. Generally, I read as much of a book as possible while holding back chaos.
   If I can read a book in a day, I will. Chaos be damned and no bookmark required. Rarely, I’ve used a scrap of paper as an unobtrusive bookmark. Sitting a book on a table, face-down, wide-open, isn’t something I do. It’s easy enough to remember the page, arrange coffee, and return to where I left off.
   Chapters are there as handy reminders to stop and arrange coffee. Writers are, themselves, great users of coffee, after all, and have provided the chapter as a basic hint to fuck off and consume caffeine from time to time. On occasion, I’ll tackle a book on a daily basis and slip a piece of paper in there if I know I am likely to be disrupted for a few days.
   Daily basis? What sort of book?
   A book of lists.
   Historical events, by day. It took me fifty days to read FIFTY DAYS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD using this list method. I was reading other books, more rapidly, during that time. Finish the day with an entry from a book like that and you have a reading routine. With coffee after midnight. That is built into the reading routine, by law.
   No, I don’t read one book at a time. This is more a law of reality than a rule.
   There’s a book on the unread shelf, full of daily notes. I reached out to check it, and, sure enough, out of sight and out of mind – behind the television that passes for my computer monitor – there was a slip of paper denoting progress.
   I unfolded the slip and found it was a scrap from a corner of a page from a letter to a dyslexic Irishman about the gift of a book. Why would I have that here, when, surely, the letter went out to Ireland there?
   There are people who write and then read on the screen, and they are happy people. I am not here to disrupt their happiness. That’s their business. I find it easier to print what I have written and to read my work aloud from the printed page…despite being a digital author.
   The dyslexic Irishman describes me as an analogue writer in a digital world. He, too, reaches for physical books when possible. In embracing digital books wholeheartedly, I could do away with the eleven bookcases in this room. If there are eleven.
   I must count them again.
  And the eighteen bookcases across the hall, come to that. If there are eighteen there. I must wend my way around the stacks, yonder. The process of counting is deceptive. Which is as it should be, in any library packed to the rafters with shelves.
   Long story short, too late, I printed the letter off and read it over for typos my electronic checkers never quite catch. The Mark I Human Eyeball takes over, and spots the glitches. I reprinted the page and scrapped the mistake-filled one.
   And I used the useless page, making it useful. A soft paper corner of it served as a makeshift bookmark. This distorted the weft and weave of the book far less than a sharp cardboard bookmark would do.
   There’s enough text from that letter to identify the book I sent. A collected edition of a comic book – easier for a dyslexic person to tackle, with less text on the page. In a novel, a wordy story might reach 400 words before you turn to the next page. A wordy comic book will feel like that if it runs over a hundred words to the pictures on a single page.
   And, of course, the dyslexic Irishman had the same struggle in reading as usual. So he encountered that story on television. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman character finally came to life on the small screen – after a few truly dreadful attempts to turn the saga into an Endless action movie franchise.
   The Lord of Dreams is back. He’s your worst nightmare. This time it’s personal. Only in two dimensions. May contain traces of nuts.
   That story is known for the character of Death, who turns up to take people to their ultimate destinations. She spares a man named Hob Gadling in the presence of her brother, Dream. Buying more books than you can read in a lifetime? Well, the obvious answer to that puzzler is to live for all time. I’ll see what I can do about that one.

REVISITING AN AUTHOR’S LIBRARY.

A bajillion years ago, I decided to crack down on unread books bought in bulk during sales. Change of regime. I’d challenge myself to chew through a few unread volumes on a shelf and declare that shelf cleared.

   How fared my simple plan?

   The simple plan went a-gley. Instead of devouring two unread books on a shelf crammed with a further 22 read volumes, I read what I pleased. No shelf was cleared in the making of this blog post. Instead, I enjoyed reading book upon book with no great sense to the order.

   I squeezed some juice out of bookends, and reorganised my shelves for the bajillionth time. Somehow, I swept an entire shelf of tomes into seeming nothingness. Breathing was done, and space grew. I conjured more room for even more books.

   And I have fewer unread works on my shelves.

   The trick is to refrain from purchasing books. Make those gains LAST. Absorb information from pages. Let that data inform my work. The author’s library is no burden. It is a wonderful thing.

   Admittedly, the classic-heavy hardback portion of my library could be packed away into the Kindle with no difficulty. That’s why the collection is no burden – electronically. Physically, I dread to think what the hard stack weighs. The heaviest book in the library checks in at…

   Almost eighteen pounds. Undisputed heavyweight champeen. I try to imagine the number of Kindle units stacking up to that same weight, and the mass of books stored on so many machines. Wisely, I stop imagining after lifting my Kindle and hefting the non-weight of it.

   For a week, I think, I had no books on the floor. That handy storage area has since been reinstated. Tales stack up, as though they are aircraft waiting to land. Land they do. Then they taxi to the final destination. Done. Occasionally dusted.

   The comfortable chair (behind this strict writerly chair) has three books on it. There are seven titles on a piece of furniture to my left. Six books lie on the floor. My seldom-used printer plays host to a single volume. That’s a book I’d read. Sitting there for reference. A work on ghosts.

   Surely I need no research material for a ghost story? I just make it all up. Don’t I? Depends on the type of ghost story I’m writing. A comedy. Oh. Even less reason to reach for research tools? Far from it.

   When I installed two computers, my office became the old office. Here, in my hardback library, my new office came into existence. The old office is just my paperback library now. Through there, a check shows one book on the floor. Seven volumes on one desk, and five on the other. These works are read and unread, living in harmony.

   The paperback library has far more read books in it. Why? Hardbacks were bought in bulk, during sales. That’s the simple, crushing, reason. So there you have a snapshot of my library, slightly updated.

   Snapshot?

   Updated?

   You may take it that this is always the state of things for any writer, no matter the update. I’ll have stacks on the floor, and on chairs. Stories to absorb. Some novels to read again. A few works to flip through for research.

   There’ll be tales of dark and stormy nights read on dark and stormy nights. Stories of high adventure, and hardy adventurers, read in conditions of comfort. Mysteries to be solved, as well as unsolved items reserved for pondering over. History. Biography. The odd bit of poetry.

   Stories ostensibly for children. Reading Victorian and Edwardian fiction for children informs the author of the state of things as was. I may yet write my way down those dusty avenues, with an eye on adding something new. The author’s library is read for enjoyment. And for more than that.

   To write, read.

   If I am unkind to my own writing style, declaring it nineteenth century with a few tawdry postmodern tricks thrown in, that in no way denigrates the works of dead authors on my shelves. To write, be self-critical beyond the point of pain.

   I should say something of maintenance. Occasionally, I check the shelves to see if they’ll hold up to the titanic weight of books stacked upon them. One shelf gives more cause for concern than any other. The high shelf with its worldly weight of tall books arrayed against me, should there be a…

   BOOKALANCHE.

   Yes. Let’s uncoin that phrase almost immediately. Why the concern? That shelf isn’t the highest shelf. It is the one that hovers over my new office arrangements. The higher shelf, at the back of the room, with books as heavy as the books at the front…

   THAT shelf should cause as much worry. If not more.

   Nonsense. It doesn’t really matter how high those shelves are, or how heavy the books upon the shelves happen to be. No. It’s the combustibility I should fret over.

   I’ve just noticed five works lying on a shelf. They are on their own plank, but were removed from the upright position. More books stacked in the queue, waiting to be devoured. When was the last time I bought a book?

   It came into the house in January and was read in January.

   See. The job can be done. Depends on the book. I suspect that there are two hardbacks on my shelves that I’ll never get around to. For I attempted to tackle both, and had to stop for a break that almost turned into eternal rest.

   It’s rare that I’ll abandon a book – I expect I’ll finish them this century.

   The shelves all seem fine. Random as they are. All shelves are stacked by convenience. Only a single shelf has a loose-fitting collection of tomes. The other shelves are snug with books. Rarely, I see a need to shuffle works around.

   That comes to pass when an awkward volume enters the library. If I remove those two, I can add that one to this shelf. The height is a problem. Now I’ll have to shuffle the other two around, and see what I can do about several of these items grouped by a very general theme…

   And so it goes.

   Public libraries are alphabetised and categorised for public convenience. Private libraries follow private rules governed by the laws of space-time. Height is a factor. Breadth proves of import. Occasionally category rears its head – though seldom.

   The day before I sat to write this blog post, I noticed a book shelved upside-down. A set of riotous, if unreliable, memoirs by Clive James. His Australian nature has no bearing on the upside-down-ness of his book, though some will sneer at so easy a target’s not being hit.

   Setting the book to rights, I had a quick go at the author’s introduction and burst out laughing as I impersonated that wonderful wandering waver in his accent. His words, unsurprisingly, go well with it.

   I’ve now checked the stacks, and I just spotted another upside-downer.

   How can you tell? Of the hundreds of hardbacks on my shelves, 40% of them have upright titles – the words are read with the books stacked spine-up. So it’s very easy to see if a book is upside-down going by spine alone.

   Almost 60% of the books carry titles readable by turning your head on its side – to the right. One book flouts the convention, and a left-hand turn is called for. In truth, no head-twisting is required. We have the capacity to absorb the information at a glance. Clue’s in the title.

   Ow. No more shady wordplay today.

   Why does that one tome carry its author and title from spine-bottom to spine-top? I cannot say. The rest run in the other direction – for ease of use in reading the title if the book lies stacked flat in a face-up pile, rather than upright on a shelf-plank.

   I stack books in a series from right to left. The Jungle Book sits to the right of The Second Jungle Book. If I were to remove the series and lay the books flat, then I’d read them in order from top to bottom. Convenience is handy that way.

   Now I’m staring at spines, wondering why some books carry the author’s name first while others start with the title itself. There are a few examples of the title missing an author. They are world-famous, and need no writerly introduction. The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Scarlet Letter sit side by side, simply for having scarlet in the title. It’s a private library, and the books are stacked as I please – size-permitting.

   Those authorless red-themed books are almost identical in size. Not quite authorless. I found a clipping on Nat Hawthorne sandwiched between the scarlet volumes. Clarification? Neither book is red. Both tomes have been read.

   I hate to puncture an image. There are no cobwebs. Shocking, I know. The shelves, though they should be of deep dark wood, are light and airy. To burst the bubble, there’s half a shelf free. Though I’m quick to point out that the shelf in question is already a half-shelf. A corner plank. I may just be able to store this next year’s gathering of hardbacks there.

   (Nonsense. No more books.)

NEXT BLOG: SELF-PUBLISH AND SELF-PUBLISH AGAIN.