I am a reader from a family of readers.  I usually have two or three books going at a time.  And for years and years I was a collector of books—not in the first edition sense, but just acquiring book after book and then shelf after shelf to store them all.  But I am getting better and I am sure that forests of trees are literally happier for that happenstance.

Three events helped me on my way away from my role as literary hoarder.  First, I have moved a lot of late.  And moving boxes and boxes of heavy books really opens your mind to the idea of shedding a few volumes here and there.  The next thing was Hurricane Isabel in 2003.  That event put a number of my books under about six inches of water and when the well-loved and wordy shifted to the wet and moldy roughly half my library was trundled out to the compost pile.  And then there was the advent of really good search engines on the internet, which made my research library suddenly less than useful.  I’ll admit that it took me a while to not want to bring home most books that I saw like lost puppies but eventually my biblio-compulsion subsided.

And now I am discovering the joy of book sharing.  This works two ways for me.  First, there is a circulating pile of books that wends its way through my family and friends.  My reading interests overlap a lot with my father’s and some with my two sisters.  I read mainly fiction and my wife clings dearly to non-fiction—the exception being Jane Austen and others or her ilk which she shares with my two sisters.  The nieces and nephews jump into this pile at various points.  Friends too get into the sharing circle and boxes of pre-read books often end up as well-loved presents. 

The second way is that my wife and I have rediscovered public libraries.  Our favorites have been small, neighborhood libraries which are big on smiles and dialog and generally less strict on fines and rules.  But the books in the big ones work just as well.  What’s more, libraries are excellent “third places,” those nice safe quiet spaces that complement our home and places of work.  And many of them offer books on tape or CDs as well as services where audio books can be downloaded to computers and i-pods for free.  As a writer I feel a twinge of guilt in that the writer does not get his or her due from my read, but I can get past that bit of conscience. 

The ultimate in all of this would probably be electronic books like the Kindle offered by Amazon.  This option seems like the best of all worlds in that authors get paid for their work and trees get saved as well as gas for trips to libraries and book stores.  I like this idea and have seen them used effectively in many different settings but part of me still likes holding a book and turning pages turned and enjoyed by others.  I even have a certain fondness for improvised bookmarks made from old theater tickets or business cards.  There is a connection with books and other items that is lost when an “e-“is appended as prefix.  I’ll get there eventually, but I am still recovering from the fact that the razor blades I’ve used for the last four decades are no longer available.  Change is good.  Change is e-good. 

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