Waste of Money?

Yesterday a friend posted on my Facebook page a picture of a wall of books with the caption "Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper."

My friends know me well.

The post originally came from Random House Publishers, and it was interesting to read the comments about this phenomenon, mostly from people who are guilty of it. There was one person who while admitting he was probably being pragmatic believed buying books with no intention of reading them is pretentious and wasteful. Someone, not impolitely, although unnecessarily, suggested he must not be a reader, and he took exception to the assumption. I can understand why he did; however I thought it was rather assuming on his part to assume book collectors have "no intention of reading" the books we buy, and a bit pretentious to point out that everything in his home must have a purpose; just because we cannot see what that purpose is in someone else's life, doesn't mean there is no purpose present. I didn't post these observations there because such postings tend to result in flame wars and I understand his opinion even if I do not agree with it. For the same reason I am not intending to flame this stranger here, but rather wish to use the remarks as a jumping off point.

For the next few comments in that stream, a portion of them were addressed to this man, each saying in one way or another that we do indeed intend to read every book we purchase. One person wisely pointed out that we tend to think we are purchasing the time to read them along with the book itself. That struck a chord for me!

I have bought books before because I liked the author or the series and wanted the set, later discovering I only liked that particular book. I sometimes went to great trouble and expense procuring the set before I realized I no longer wanted it. Was this a "waste of money"? Perhaps, to the pragmatist it is - but then again, pragmatically, if the action helped me define my tastes and refine my collector's skills, it wasn't a waste at all, but rather pragmatic. Was it pretentious?  Well, since my intention was never to show off, I'd have to say "no", even if it appears that way to some. Some of my acquaintances have wondered why I have bought leather bound volumes of some of my favorite tomes when I already own perfectly servicable copies. Well, my favorite books I enjoy lending out, so I like multiple copies of them anyway, and, may my vegan friends forgive me, I like the feel and smell of high quality books. But any desire to show off my library isn't to show off my vast knowledge, eclectic tastes or income; it is to show people That I Have Books! And they can borrow them! The paperbacks, the hardcovers, the beat-up ones, the pristine copies (as long as they promise to be gentle); the fiction and non-fiction, adult and children's books... because... I Have Books! Books! Do you understand? BOOKS! Well, book lovers understand what I mean; book likers shake their heads in consternation.

Why do I have two bookcases filled with nothing but dictionaries? Because I like dictionaries. I like how different dictionaries define words differently over the decades. I like how they describe a word differently in the same year of publication but one defines it descriptively and another prescriptively.  No, I'm not being pretentious and trying to show how much smarter I am than everyone else. In fact the more I read, the more I learn how much I do not know. No, I haven't read every single word in every single dictionary, nor do I intended to; just the ones I am curious about at any given moment in time.

I have not read every single book I own, although I have read enough of each to know that I would like to someday, or at least I felt that way when I bought it. Perhaps when science figures out cloning so my clone can go to work for me and I can stay home and read, or when science figures out how to double or triple our life expectancies. Every now and then I glean my books and find new homes for those which I intended to read at one time but do not intend to now. Every now and then I put the book back on the shelf because it still whispers "Read Me!" And every now and then, it's a good thing that pragmatist didn't chuck that book years ago, because although I probably could retrieve a new copy of something I gave away, when the time to read something is Now! it is nice to have the book Right There. Such was the case with "The Phantom Tollbooth", which I read last year after it sat on my shelf for fifteen years, patiently waiting for me to be mature enough to comprehend it. Was it "pragmatic" to keep it there for so long? I'll answer that question with another: Would it have been pragmatic to get rid of it before I'd discovered the marvelous treasure that book is?

Some of my friends think I spend too much money on books I don't read. From a strictly financial viewpoint they might have something. They are generally the same people who don't quite understand why I spend a bit more money on premium root beer, chocolate and cheese rather than the cheapest (translate: "inferior tasting") generic stuff at the store. They cannot understand why I think it's worth the money, why I will make sacrifices elsewhere to buy what I deem the "good stuff". I cannot understand their "smart" phones when my "dumb" phone allows me to make phone calls for a fraction of the cost, nor their $150 cable bills when not having any cable TV at all allows me to buy, um, a lot of books.

So I don't think it's impractical or wasteful to spend money on books. The enjoyment I garner from books goes beyond the escape into other worlds and the procurement of knowledge. I will allow things should have a purpose, but I think it unwise and unkind to assume the value we place on things or the purpose we ascribe to them ourselves holds true for everyone. However I have found in my current decluttering that there's a definite purpose to being organized enough to know what I own and have at least a general idea where it is located so I don't continue to run into duplicate copies which I'd forgotten I had or had previously been certain I'd bought but had been unable to locate before replacing something that wasn't lost after all. Then again, duplicate copies make nice gifts, and what can be more pragmatic than that?

Speaking of pragmatism, older dictionaries defining "pragmatic" include the now-considered-archaic definitions "officious" and "meddlesome". In other words, a pragmatist is a busybody. A little bit of practical (some might say "pretentious") information I would not have known if I had decided it was impractical to keep an "old" dictionary on my shelf.