An Autobibliographic Reflection On Marital Compatibility For My Husband Of Thirty-Six Years: If You Didn’t Love Books, Perhaps I Wouldn’t Love You, Although I Can’t Imagine Not Loving You, Books Or Not, So I Suppose It Doesn’t Matter. Except It Does.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. • Groucho Marx

My husband is my best friend. We celebrated our thirty-sixth anniversary at the end of March and as we sit here in bed reading this morning, I realize that our mutual bookishness helps sustain my love during those tough times when I’d just as soon stomp on his toes and push sharp objects under his fingernails as look at him. Of course, we also share a love of guacamole and movies and home-popped corn and artichokes and the garlic-that-can-never-be-too-much. Trips to the beach, camping in the redwoods, walks to the farmer’s market for tamales and just-fried donuts, and driving for hours to find a drive-in movie theatre are other things we both enjoy. But although these shared joys are certainly meaningful, as I count the things that really count, it is the books. Once the initial fires of attraction become the glow and occasional growl of ongoing companionship, a relationship needs something to sustain it. Books help.

If You Didn’t Love Books, Perhaps I Wouldn’t Love You

A Reflection On Marital Compatibility

You have packed and carried and moved and shelved hundreds—no thousands—of books in our years together, yet you never suggest that I let go of any of them.

You don’t really like thrift shopping, but you go with me. I can find you in the book section, leaning against a shelf, book in hand.

Waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I pay you back with the Hawaiian shirts I find.

You never complain as you carry my bags of books on the walk home from the store.

You stop at any bookstore I want to visit and you enjoy them too.

You don’t complain if I spend hours browsing the shelves.

I’ll find you somewhere, book in hand, patiently reading.

And waiting.

You step over books that are piled in almost every room in our house and never gripe.

You know that books are decorative, that they add to the soul of our home.

You love them too.

You don’t mind when I turn the staircases into extra bookshelves.

When we traveled across the country and back and our narrow sleeping space in the van was increasingly encroached upon by the boxes of books that were too heavy to ship home, you laughed with me as we rolled onto our sides to sleep. From behind, the van had a serious list to one side.

You enjoy many of the same books I do. Under our bed are boxes full of books ready for reading.

There are stacks of books on your side of the bed too.

We fill sacks with finished books to give away, but you understand that many books are keepers.

Much of our shared reading is cotton-candy and ephemeral, but although you are not an academic, you read serious stuff.

You love history and geography and can find rivers and mountains and strange lands whose names have changed and changed again.

I rely on you for daily briefings on current events and for your knowledge of the history of the countries involved.

You step over stacks of books and never say a word.

You understand that a home can never have too many bookshelves.

You help me make room for another.

You are a learner. I love that in a man. I love that in a person. I love that in myself. It is an ongoing joy that doesn’t cost anything, unless, of course, you buy a lot of books.

You never question the money I spend on books.

You like to go to the library with me.

You go to the library without me.

You carry my library books home.

You can fall asleep with the light on if you are ready to go to sleep and I am still reading.

You can sleep if I awaken in the night and turn the light on and need to read or write.

You were as excited as I was to find volume one of Mark Twain’s Autobiography discounted at a big box store.

And, of course, you like to read yourself into the day as much as I do.

You are reading right now, while I write this.

What sustains your relationships?

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  • James Russell Lowell

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. • Mary Wortley Montagu

Alas, Patricia Cornwell Is Not Agatha Christie; Not, Of Course, That I Think She Ought To Be, But Childhood Memories Linger, Creating Impossible Standards

The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.
• Philip Guedalla, British barrister, biographer, and travel and historical writer

I am several books’ deep into my end-of-the-quarter-just-let-my-brain-vegetate-for-a-few-days reading. Of course this means forays into vampire- and zombie-related stuff for a presentation I’m working on and even some seriously pleasurable academic reading, including potential new texts for courses I teach. But it also means mounds of mysteries. I just finished a Patricia Cornwell book and I’m sorry to say that my affection for PC has been tested one too many times. I used to look forward to the latest adventure of Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta, one of the contributors to the current CSI craze, but no more.

While civilization remains such that one needs distraction from time to time, “light” literature has its appointed place.
• George Orwell (pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, best known to students as the author of the dystopian novel, 1984)

The last few Scarpetta books I’ve read have devolved into complexities dependent on remembering what I read earlier to give them depth and comprehensibility. If I were reading them one after the other, this might work, but years and years and many, many, many, many, many, many, many other books have come between previous and present reading about Dr. S and her colleagues and I just don’t care anymore about her or them or reappearing villains and ancient angst. I read this kind of book to forget, not to remember.

I read two a week in bed at night: can’t concentrate on much else then. . .To me they are a great solace, a sort of mental knitting, where it doesn’t matter if you drop a stitch.
• Rupert Hart-Davis, British publisher, editor, and biographer, on detective stories

At the end of The Scarpetta Factor (2009), there’s a notice listing seven books related to the one I just finished. I’ve read them all, and their cotton candy words have not stuck with me. As with all such books, I purchased my most recent Cornwell paperback in a thrift store a week ago; I never pay full price for disposable reading, so I seldom read a book immediately after it’s released, nor do I always read them in the order in which they were written, although I try. Still, a book that is likely to be picked up by someone looking for in-flight entertainment ought to stand on its own or at least provide clarification of crucial information early on.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor expensive diversions, or variety of company, if she can be amused with an author. . .
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762, early feminist and writer)

I’ve also realized that although I’m learning a bit about forensic science from this series, I’m not learning the same kinds of life lessons from Scarpetta that I once gleaned from my favorite Christie detectives, Miss Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot. These two sleuths initiated me into the Order of Recognition of Red Herrings (see the Oxford English Dictionary for more about the phrase “red herring,” originating in the practice of dragging a smoked herring across the path to cover the scent of a fox and divert the hounds). I practiced cogitation under their tutelage. I learned to look for clues on the page as well to read between the lines as they revealed the thinking that helped them solve the mysteries.

Detective stories help reassure us in the belief that the universe, underneath it all, is rational. They’re small celebrations of order and reason in an increasingly disordered world.
• P.D. James, British crime writer

I am a more annoying companion because of Marple and Poirot. I am also more annoyed because of them. It is their fault that I must write my insights about a movie’s conclusion on my palm—pen to skin—so that I can share them after the final credits rather than spoiling my companion’s opportunity to either solve a film’s challenge for hermself or be surprised. Who was Keyser Soze in the1995 film, The Usual Suspects? I knew long before the reveal. And because of Christie’s protagonists, I am annoyed by my ability to figure out a book’s ending many chapters before the dénouement. Plot twists and unexpected villains seldom surprise me.

“Poirot said placidly, “One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – ” he tapped his egg-shaped head – “this, that functions!”
• Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in Five Little Pigs, first published in the United States as Murder in Retrospect (1942), following its 1941 serialization under that name in the U.S. in Collier’s Weekly

Edmund Wilson, American social commentator, writer, and critic said that “[t]he reading of detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between smoking and crossword puzzles.” I am not a smoker, nor do I enjoy the patterned precision of crosswords, but I am held captive by the mystery vice. Christie and Cornwell are only two of dozens of authors who companion my nights. I’ve gleaned something from just about every mystery I’ve gobbled over the years—a new word, a bit of trivia, an amazing fact—but none of them has given me what Christie did, insight into systematically solving problems through carefully examining evidence and engaging in sustained and creative thinking.

The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.
• Agatha Christie

What kind of reading is your vice? What kind of virtuous reading do you do? Do vice and virtue ever overlap?

“Poirot,” I said, “I have been thinking.”
“An admirable exercise, my friend. Continue it.”
• Agatha Christie (1932), Peril at End House

There’s A Magic Kingdom Somewhere Filled With Rainbows, Extraterrestrials, Snowmen, And Other Miscellaneous Stuff, Or Brief Notes On Some Of My Recent Reading Purchases

It seems to me as natural and necessary to keep notes, however brief, of one’s reading, as logs of voyages or photographs of one’s travels. For memory, in most of us, is a liar with galloping consumption.
• F.L. Lucas

I am a liar. I promised that my next post would be about authors who inspire me, but I’m not feeling inspired to write that one even though I’ve started pulling the books together. That’s one of the challenges of completing any kind of assignment—required or self-imposed: Sometimes you just don’t feel like doing what you ought to do. This an ongoing creative challenge and it’s the reason that I like to have multiple projects in progress. When I want to feel productive, I can generally find something to work on, even if it’s not the moment’s primary task.

Here’s what I’d rather do today: There are two stacks of recently purchased books next to the bed. I’ve started Post-It®-ing them, but I also want to post them so that I can track their entrance into the house. Ten years from now, I’ll know that in the last two weeks, these are some of the books I’ve bought at thrift stores:

• Terry Brooks (1986), Magic Kingdom for Sale. This is at least the fifth copy of this book I’ve purchased. I’ve given my other copies away to reluctant readers. I don’t usually like fantasy books. I couldn’t make it through J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, for example. I hesitate to even mention this in print since I don’t want to incur the wrath of those who love his books. I’ve tried to read Tolkien, but I just don’t care. This may be because my favorite kind of reading is non-fiction and elves and dwarves and fairyfolk and mythical and magical creatures and other kinds of fictional oddities just aren’t appealing. No matter.

I still use Brooks’ book as the basis of an assignment that asks students to design their own magic kingdom. In the book, a Christmas Wishbook the protagonist gets in the mail offers a “Magic Kingdom for Sale,” promising that “[a]ll of your fantasies become real in this kingdom from another world. . .Escape into your dreams, and be born again” (p. 6). All this for a mere million dollars.

I’m pretty sure I love this book because Disneyland is my hometown, the one place that’s remained largely unchanged since my childhood. I can’t go home again, but I can go back to Walt’s fantasy world and find my memories there. Fantasizing about your very own magic kingdom is a lovely way to while away an hour or two.

• A. Parody (hmmm, I’m a bit suspicious about this name) with Stephen Blake and Andrew John (2003), Shite’s Unoriginal Miscellany. This little gem includes odd lists, useless facts, and disgusting information, and is an altogether amusing piece of timewastery featuring, for example, a list of toilet-related euphemisms. Next time you have to go, you can “go to the library, your private office, to Egypt, into retreat, to explore the geography of the house, to check on the scones, to pay a visit to your uncle, to pick a rose, to see your aunt, to visit the old soldier’s home,” or. . . ; all these and more can be found on page 93.

As a quotation collector, I especially appreciate this one from page 114, although I do think that the promise of “memorable movie lines” is hyperbolic: “Once they were men. Now they are land crabs,” from 1957’s Attack of the Crab Monsters. Since I also collect breast-related information, I’m delight to know that twenty-seven percent of female lottery winners hid their winning tickets in their bras (p. 144). But enough teasing. I’m sure you want to read this one for yourself.

• Cooper Edens (1979), If You’re Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow. Children’s books often delight me and this lovely little book offers up multiple tidbits of unusual advice: “If you find your socks don’t match, stand in a flower bed.” I can imagine using this book as the inspiration for a collaborative bookmaking activity.

• Wendy Kaminer (1999), Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety. Social critic Kaminer’s essays about what people believe and why they believe it continues to be meaningful more than a decade after it was written. As I think about recent political “debates,” I appreciate this from page 228: “Every argument is thought to have only two sides. A debate consists of one side saying ‘Is to’ and the other side insisting ‘Is not.’ So, when millions of Americans went on-line, they were well prepared for a cacophonous world of half-finished thoughts and interrupted expositions of ideas.”

I want teachers with whom I work to know what they believe about teaching and learning, but I also want them to be able to situate those beliefs in a larger context. This can be difficult for them to understand. “If it’s what I feel, why do I have to explain it?” some of them ask. But we are awash in a sea of information, much of it specious, inundated daily by wave after wave of potential influences. Exploring beliefs deeply and thoughtfully helps insure that we won’t simply take a position and be unable to support it. Educators who must make countless curricular content and delivery and assessment choices while also successfully managing classrooms must know what they plan to do, but they need to know why as well. The rationale matters (and it should be a rational one).

• Jack Frost, a novelization by Jennifer Baker (1998), based on the screenplay by Mark Steven Johnson and Steven Bloom and Jonathan Roberts. We have a family tradition. Every year on Christmas eve, we go out for pizza and see a bad movie. One year, Jack Frost was our choice. I like Michael Keaton, but what I really like from this film is one of my favorite quotations ever: “There’s no dad like a snow dad!” Who wouldn’t want this book for their collection? Oh, you, snarkypants? Your loss, I assure you.

Oh, dear. I’ve scarcely diminished the stacks.

What books have you purchased—or wanted to buy—lately? And are you keeping track of what you buy?

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.
• Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, “Book Buying”