When I ride the train, the subway, walk on a beach – and see someone reading, I always want to know – what? \u00a0When people are photographed or interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, I try to make out what titles are on their shelves. Because I work in a bookstore? Maybe, but also because I am nosy – it is as if I’m sneaking a peek at who this person really is by checking out their books.<\/p>\n
My own bookshelves are packed to capacity – including too many books I have yet to read. Will I ever? There are titles that I feel like I should read — a great example being a huge tome: <\/span>Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia<\/em> by Karl E. Meyer and Shari Blair Brysac. \u00a0Autographed by these local authors and scholars – I do<\/em> want to read it for a better understanding of this volatile region we have been so mired in – and so it stays and I think:\u00a0one da<\/em>y. The same ‘should’ keeps\u00a0From Beirut to Jerusalem <\/em>by Thomas Friedman on my shelf for years. \u00a0I cannot let go of these books nor my good intention to read them but other books always jump the reading queue.<\/p>\n Then there are the books I may want for reference – that get yanked from the shelf about once a year or so – Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide <\/em>by Goldberg and The Art Book<\/em> – a book published by Phaidon door-stop sized book I picked up once at a tag sale. It’s a fast-food kind of look at the history of art. \u00a0I have more cherished art and photography books I also found on sale and could not resist – the most recent find being Andy Goldsworthy’s Passage<\/em> – this remarkable sculptor’s poetic works are created out of nature – powerful works of time and space – some of stone but many others of ice, leaves, the tides and now, only a photograph remains. \u00a0It sits on a table in my living room and I have looked at it maybe once but I am so glad it is there.<\/p>\n I have the powerful photography books by my friend Ron Haviv – his important documentation of wars including\u00a0Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal – <\/em>the war I knew. <\/em>My Balkan titles can take up their own shelf and I have read them all, hungering to understand the madness that was my life for four years. \u00a0My collection began back in 1992 with Rebecca West’s classic Black Lamb, Grey Falcon <\/em>and Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia. <\/em>Later on, I added\u00a0David Rieff’s\u00a0Slaughterhouse, <\/em>Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. <\/em>And perhaps the one most poignant for me, My War Gone By, I Miss it So <\/em>by Anthony Lloyd – a powerful memoir of addiction to war and to drugs.<\/p>\n The addiction self-help books have mostly been purged – in the hopes that the problem is also gone out of my life, I have passed them on to others who might find them useful. \u00a0But I have kept the memoirs – Beautiful Boy <\/em>by David Sheff, Mary Karr’s Lit. <\/em><\/p>\n Over the years I have amassed a collection of signed titles that are impossible to part with – I see them as a legacy for my daughter. J. K. Rowling – the second Harry Potter title signed at an event at the store early on in her success. \u00a0Still, it was like hosting a rock star but she was lovely, signing well over a thousand books and looking every child in the eye and sharing a chat while signing with her arm in a brace. \u00a0My inscribed copies of\u00a0Angela’s Ashes <\/em>and Teacher Man <\/em>will always have a revered place on my shelf with warm memories of my encounters with Frank McCourt.<\/p>\n There are <\/em>books I can and should cull: novels I have read and never will again. Outdated travel guides – to Bali, Martha’s Vineyard (I have not been since high school), the Florida Keys (I have never been) parenting guides, cookbooks I never open – but as my eye scans the dusty spines, I think of a reason why I want each one to stay – a memory, the possibility I might one day need to check on the correct Serbo-Croatian word or refer to that book The Brain.<\/em> I won’t though — the internet is too easy. \u00a0At least, I will dust them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I ride the train, the subway, walk on a beach – and see someone reading, I always want to know – what? \u00a0When people are photographed or interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, I try to make out what titles are on their shelves. Because I work in a bookstore? Maybe, but … Continue reading Living with Books<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,10,5,12],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-bosnian-war","tag-memoir","tag-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-74","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163381,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/163381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}