CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK NUT

To-be read books, all second-hand 

MY love affair with books did not start until I was 13. I was a first year student of a private school in the poblacion (Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur), and it was my first time to see a real library. I was from the barrio and I could just count with my fingers the books that I had read, and suddenly I was in a place surrounded by an impressive collection of books, a wide variety of titles, stacked up neatly in series of shelves and glass cabinets.

I knew right then what I really wanted to do, and that was to read. Soon, I was in the library devouring fantastic stories, children’s fiction, anthologies, encyclopedias, adventures and history, to the point that I had been forgetting to review for exams and submit my school projects.

I become a compulsive reader. I would spend most of my vacant time in the library. There were just too many books to read. That started my most dearly cherished ambition to live in a big house with my own private library. I even had this secret wish to stay in prison surrounded by lots of books to read, just like the young lawyer in Anton Chekhov’s “The Bet,” who spent, because of a crazy bet, 15 years of solitary confinement reading books, from novels with a complicated love plot, sensational stories, to volumes on languages, philosophy, history, and religion, thus educating himself.  

School work was never hard work for me until college, because I genuinely enjoyed reading and studying. When I went to work in Manila after college, it was again all books for me. I worked in a publishing house for a very long time. After reading and editing textbook manuscripts for all kinds of errors, I read pocketbooks in my spare time. Having my own money to spend, my addiction to reading books turned into buying books, particularly second-hand books from makeshift stalls in Recto Avenue in downtown Manila.

But I only began to collect books seriously five years ago. That was when I started frequenting Booksale, a bargain bookstore chain, after I bought a pair of my long-sought books for a bargain price of only 50 pesos. Every time I walk in the store, or any place where books are available, I can’t help myself buying anything that caught my interest, of course, they must be cheap. It is almost impossible that I could browse the stacks and come away with only one book. That thrill of acquisition never escapes me. 

I buy books knowing full well that I will only read my new acquisitions on later days, or they will be put away on a shelf. I put them aside, as if they were work of art ready to meet my eyes as soon as I have the time. This may seem shallow, but just having them on display has its own sense of satisfaction separate from that of actually reading them. At some point I will pick up the book I purchased, say two years ago, and enjoy it as if it were brand-new acquisition.

Soon I started making a list of books I would like to read or acquire someday. I always bring this list with me, so that every time I enter a bookstore I could check my list to avoid buying the same book twice. That mistake happened to me once or twice in the past, so I started gardening my list to control my purchasing habits. Now, I check off those that I have acquired and scribble new titles on the list. Keeping a list also encourages me to read more, knowing that I can reward myself with a new book soon enough, and not feel guilty about it.

With the way I feel about books, I don’t think this addiction or habit of mine is a nagging problem. Because, when it comes to reading, there will always be more books that I haven’t read than books that I have. People keep on writing books, anyway. And my book collection will always be as important as my reading accomplishments. I agree with some book lovers’ blogs when they declare that a library of books waiting to be read far out beats one that has already been devoured. Honestly, though, I don’t have yet that library I dreamed of. I only have a small shelf, and top of plastic drawers and tables where I could file my acquisitions.

A part of my house now becomes a cross between an unkempt mini library and a dusty stall of bargain books, all 210 of them waiting to be read. And my stack will surely go higher after I wrote this blog. I just like to surround myself with every source of knowledge I can have. 

One time, my youngest child even expressed her doubts that I was actually reading those books that I bought. This made me stop and ask myself: Am I a just a book collector, a book lover or just bookworm or a reading nut? I could easily say I am of the last type, but when I read a blog posted on the theatlanticwire.com, I got a clear diagnosis of myself as a reader. According to the blogger in her two-part article, for as many books as exist, there are also as many different reading types a book lover might demonstrate. Wow, some of the types (I set in italics below) that she mentioned resonate with me!

I just love books, and reading is my greatest pleasure. Undoubtedly I am a bookophile. I am also into reading e-books now, but I still prefer the old-fashioned ink-and-paper books. I always love the somewhat musty smell of old books and the crispiness of new ones. And with my personal list of read and to-be read books, I can also say I am a chronological reader. I read books according to the order when I bought them. I go through each book methodically and reasonably, until it is done. Then read the next one, and moving from one book to another almost without gaps.

I am also the all-the-timer/compulsive/voracious/anything goes reader. I read almost anything I can get my hands on. Wherever I go I bring books with me. Whatever I do, at home or in the office, there’s a book on my side waiting to be read in between tasks. I can grab any book so long as it fires up the imagination and is simply lovely, or it can get me the pleasure of whiling away my time reading them. With that I am also the “it’s complicated” reader type, meaning I refuse to be categorized as what kind of reader I am, nor admit a particular reflection of my identity with my book collection. Here’s another not-so-shameful secret: I am a grown-up who still reads Y.A. (Collins, Rowling, Riordan) or kids books (Lemony Snickets, Dr. Seuss); but, hey, when I was a kid, I also read adult books. I read my first Dickens, Fitzgerald and Eliot when I was in high school, so there’s a sort of a balance here.

And another good reason why my book list keeps on growing is that I am an easily influenced reader. If another bookworm or bibliophile says that this book is great, he or she must be right. I am always curious to read books mentioned by authors in their work, any great books that fit their taste or had influenced them, those award-winning books (Pulitzer, Man Booker, etc), and those from Oprah Book Club and similar book clubs or associations, and find out why these books got such honor or recognition. And lastly, I am the sleepy bedtime reader. Since I was a kid, reading books has been my sleeping pill. I always tote a book into bed, closing my day by reading it with my head propped up by a comfy pillow, until I feel my eyelids turn into lead.  

So I keep on reading in spite of the multiple distractions of my work now as a freelancer, and my obligations as head of the family, raising my three kids as a single parent. There are flat-out busy days, but I always see to it that I can have a second to spare for my reading.

Just after the death of my wife, reading has been my refuge, my salvation.  My ardent desire to calm my nerves or to divert my mind from sorrow and even anger has rather sparked my very intense and productive time in reading, living up to the fact that I am still very much a book nut.

I am not yet ready to listen to advice that I must cull my collection. Early this year, I met a former classmate who now teaches in the elementary school in our barrio and told her about my plan to donate some of my books for the school library. I still have to work this out this coming summer. But, of course, I must keep those particularly valuable books, my all-time favorites, and those nonfiction sources that I come back to regularly for reliable information. 

Right now I have started organizing my collection. I have put those books that I have read in boxes, putting separately now those that I plan to keep and those that I can donate. But as long as my other books do not intrude on other aspects of my home or obstruct parts of it, it seems to me that having too many books in my house is not a problem at all.