On Books, and Hoarding. And Joy

Due to the fact that I happily allow Google, Facebook, and the internet in general spy on my every thought**, some clickbait made its way into my feed: Going Against the Decluttering Craze: the Book Hoarders Who Defy Marie Kondo. I made some comment in my blog post I shared a week or so ago about "that Marie Kondo shit," so I figured I'd bite. I guessed it would be some nonsense faux-trage because she had the temerity to suggest we limit the amount of books we hang on to, and rawr rawr how dare she. I mean, sure, she dared suggest we hang on to a mere 30 books, which is utterly impossible, but she didn't suggest it out of meanness. I think.

Kondo wakes up in cold-sweats
about rooms like Isaac's

The title of the article certainly cuts that way: book hoarders who defy Marie Kondo. Defy her righteous quest to make our houses look like Crate and Barrel catalogs! Rail at the pop culture icon as a target on which to project all of our guilt about messy houses! How come my mom's house is spotless and lovely??

(Narrator: you have kids; they don't anymore)

Truth be told, I don't want to knock her art. She has a method of thinking about clutter and balance that has a valuable place. It's thoughtful and challenging and meditative. Her focus is asking people to really think about what brings one joy, and for the life of me, I can't think of what could be wrong with contemplating joy.

It becomes clear right away, though, is that this wasn't just some angry article. Maybe it's what the author intended, but instead, it's s a lovely piece from famous book lovers talking about how important books are to them, and therein - the real meat of the article - is where I found its beauty and message. Funny to say such a short article is beautiful, but books are beautiful, and people writing enthusiastically and warmly about things they love is a lovely way to spend a few minutes of your day.

 A few quotes really stood out to me:

"The first place I go in someone's house is their bookshelves. You can tell exactly who they are."

I love that. It's true! Maybe I've chosen my friends well, or maybe the right people have fallen into my life (hint: the latter), but when I go to my friends' houses, and friends' friends' houses, I scan their bookshelves, but not to make some judgey judgment about who they are. I do it because I'm curious to see in their heads and find a common place and talk about interesting stuff they know because they read. Reading, after all, is one of the things that drew me to Jennifer***, and here we are today after 20 years.

"I do not loan books. I'd rather just buy you your own copy...When you give a book to someone, they might not feel the same way about it that you do...And you don't realize how much it meant until you don't get it back."

Dom's bedtime stash

One of my very best friends - Greg Dufner - and I have very different views about that quote. He freely, gladly, happily gives books away. To him, it's like a transfer of some thing: an emotion, a laugh, knowledge, entertainment. I envy him in this. For me, books are so deeply personal that it's hard to let them go. And when I read a book, especially a great one, I feel like buying more copies supports an artist and their art. I like the conversations a book can lead to, and as a wild extrovert, it's the talking-to-people part of reading that really means the most to me. I guess, at the end of it, Greg and I sort of feel the same way about a transfer of a thing; we just go about it very differently. I can't help but think, though, that my way is a tad selfish. But however you look at it - my way or Greg's - the joy of sharing books is one of life's great ones.

We raise our kids on books. We and our school system insist on reading time every day, and my boys exceed it every day. One of the single greatest joys of my day is reading to my boys. Sadly, Isaac doesn't partake anymore but the twins still ask and I happily oblige. And when I read, I read. I'm proud of it. I do voices and accents and good God I love it. Currently, I'm on the 3rd book of Rick Riordan's Carter Kane trilogy. Reading a story aloud - the process of telling a story - is as old as humanity, and I cherish my Audible library as much as my physical one. One of my all-time favorite authors Neil Gaiman, shared a similar passion for telling stories, and it made me so happy to hear someone the likes of him enjoy the medium so much. My dad and grandparents read to me. I guess I'll call it a family tradition!

Double- triple-stacked

The shelves in our house are packed, but there's no end in sight. Books we've read, will read, might read, should read, probably maybe will eventually read, let's admit it we'll never read but it looked awesome, and are reading. Bedtime reading, nightstand reads, comfy-chair books, toilet reading (Isaac has developed my bad habit of sitting for 1,000 years on the toilet, reading), camping reading, vacation reading, car ride books (both kinds: across town errand books and longer day-trip books), bar reading, restaurant reading, coffee table displays...what am I missing? My heart leaps when I look as our roomsful of books, and when, as we settle down at night, I see each of the boys absorbed in one. On the occasions when we have to discipline one of our boys, Jennifer and I have an agreement that never will groundings-from-things extend to books.

So cheers to my fellow book-hoarders! Long live your stacks and stacks of books, your nonexistent shelf space, your buried-in-a-pile-long-forgotten tomes!

Talk to me about books and the joy they bring!

**which, by the way, I've learned to just accept in my life and am not only at peace with it but have covered my house in Google's devices and it actually has succeeded in making my life much more convenient

***"Mom," I exclaimed excitedly after a few dates, "..she reads! BOOKS!"