#51: Stacks

What is the long-term valuation on the printed word? And what does it say about me that I even care?

The question of whether my books will be beneficial to my life moving forward requires a biblio-telepathy I do not possess. - Anakana Schofield

I called this post “Stacks” because I like the word and this post is about books and their storage. At first, though, I was hesitant to use the word, because it’s also the title of a popular Bon Iver¹ song, and there are few things musically that move me to stab my ear drums with a rusted awl than the bearded hipster funeral dirges of the mid-2000s. (Thanks, Garden State.)

I digress. I’m also not a fan of shopping, so I’m only motivated by sheer need (i.e., a bookshelf for a new home office) to drive to Saint John’s east side. A shopping district that grows unchecked in a back-filled flooded plain, I felt I’d be successful “out East” because of volume; box stores and boutiques continue to pop up, as mushrooms snaking their way along the forest floor do.

And all I wanted was one (1) wood bookshelf.

Yet here I was, sitting in my car on a chilly Friday night after visiting four stores, sans bookshelf, and listening to absolutely not-Bon Iver. It was here that two thoughts occurred to me.

---

Thought #1: Are bookshelves so absent because no one needs them anymore?

Whinging to people from my car on Instagram Stories, like a grown-up.

This is a horrifying prospect to me. While I don’t have an extensive collection by the standards of most bibliophiles, I’ve always preferred to hold onto paper when reading. But am I in a minority? It was only when the pandemic necessitated lockdowns, and so restricted access to the local library, when I finally conceded to using my phone as a means of borrowing books. Visits to the library have returned, but I still download books; it offers the benefit of listening to audiobooks while I do other things, like crochet, sketch, or garden. Nonetheless, given the time and space to do so, I’ll opt to hold a book, smelling the print with each page turn.

What that says about my psyche - well, I haven’t delved too deep into that inkwell. If I wait long enough, though, I suppose the printed word will become fashionable again, like vinyl records. Then I’ll be only a mere false step away from cuing up Skinny Love and expounding the merits of farmhouse saisons.

---

Thought #2: Why was I keeping all these books, anyways?

This only occurred to me after I put my phone down and began maneuvering to the fifth and final store. The search was an awful lot of drama for a pile of paper that may be - no, likely is - outdated: twenty-year old textbooks on neuropsychology and psychopharmacology, full of highlighter and illustrations of cartoon neurons. At the other end of the discipline, the sole representative of my own area of study is a deep red hardcover bound copy of my thesis, flanked by a few articles and chapters I co-authored as a student. Aside from the obvious sentimental value, why keep any scientific ephemera when theories turnover quicker than a Cleveland Browns quarterback²? It doesn’t make logical sense to keep books from disciplines where new knowledge has minimized previous hypotheses, or even rendered them completely obsolete. And even with literature, where stories can more or less withstand the erosion of its value over time, why keep them once you've read them?

Is it practicality that makes me hold onto these old tomes - an unwillingness to part with an investment, despite its’ diminishing returns? (Thinking that, somehow, the $120 it cost me in 2002 has kept up with inflation despite said liberal use of a highlighter, so that it is now worth $188?)

Or, is it décor? The first thing I look at on a Zoom call is the bookshelf, and in the era of pandemic-mandated video calls, I’ve had ample opportunity to spy the collections of photos, books, and trinkets behind the speakers. Similarly, I’m disappointed to get on a call and see how my background is blank or blurred, like a kidnapper only just shoved me in front of the lens to make demands.

Related to all these questions is the idea of “street cred”: that I can’t be taken seriously without books, and as such, without at least one shelf of knowledge in the background, I am no longer befit to hold the degree. As such, it is only time before the sprites, clad in hood and gown, come to steal away my parchment off the walls in the dead of night.

---

Less dramatic, Tasha Brandstatter³ shares other reasons for maintaining a book collection, such as sentiment, keeping gifts from others as a means of binding us to them, and future (re)reading. Anakana Schofield⁴ shares similar reasons but also notes the delightful impracticality of keeping books, contrasted against the wake of the Marie Kondo hyper-organization trend.

Indeed, some things in life shouldn't make any sense at all.

---

As I marinated in these multiple threads of thinking, my last week of work winds down, with another on the horizon. This isn’t coincidence; aside from being the reason I’m searching for a damn bookshelf, it’s been a reason for me to re-evaluate who am I, and the place work has in my life. What it means to no longer work in research proper, but to work adjacent in health programs. And with that, j’arrive: it all may be as simple (and as complicated) as identity: how it is shaped by our many roles, and how these roles are marked by static pieces of knowledge.

In other words, keeping books as the breadcrumbs, the trail blazes, of a journey from who I was, who I am know, and who I will be:

• The textbooks.

• The almost complete set of Robertson Davies, one of my favourite authors.

• Another almost complete set of Douglas Coupland, who I turned to when I realized Robertson Davies’ works were finite (RIP).

• Other Can Lit.

• Books on Buddhism, atheism, and meaning making.

• Books I’ve started reviewing for

  James M. Fisher
  's The Miramichi Reader.

• A couple from a pre-COVID book club that were actually pretty good (even the one endorsed by Oprah Winfrey).

And so on. Symbols of what I endured, and what endures still.

And yes, I found a solution to my bookshelf problem - with room to grow.

---

1. More like Mauvais Iver, imho.

2. I stand by my statement. 28 starting quarterbacks in 24 years? Come ON.

3. Brandstatter T. (2013 Aug 12). Why keep books. Book Riot.

4. Schofield A. (2019 Jan 7). What we gain from keeping books and why it doesn’t need to be joy. The Guardian.