{"id":4209,"date":"2006-01-18T09:15:35","date_gmt":"2006-01-18T14:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4209"},"modified":"2015-05-20T07:58:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T11:58:40","slug":"cherished-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4209","title":{"rendered":"Cherished Objects"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my more constant activities in my life is weeding through the stacks of books I own, and getting rid of non-essentials. You may be surprised at how difficult this is. I have to get into a very cold-hearted mood. Turn a deaf ear to all of the instincts rising up in me, shrieking: “You might read this book someday! So-and-so LOVED this book!” Sometimes it feels like the book itself is screaming at me. “Nooooo! Don’t throw me away! I’m really good!!”<\/p>\n

But there are the tried-and-true favorites, books I will never <\/i>discard. I’m talking about them as OBJECTS now … not just books I love. I mean, if you lose your copy of Alice in Wonderland<\/i>, just go buy a new one, right? Well – if any of you have had the same books around you for many many years – you know that some books have irreplaceable value. Buying a brand spanking new copy wouldn’t be right at all.<\/p>\n

I’m one of those people who loves to underline passages that catch my fancy, (not just philosophical passages, but descriptive passages, humorous passages – I take notes for myself, if necessary – I underline sentences I love and want to remember – or at least be able to locate quickly should the occasion arise) – so my copy of Catcher in the Rye <\/i>is literally falling apart at the seams, held together with tape, with little underlines and asterisks in the margins throughout. It’s like a code to decipher. I can’t tell WHY I underlined certain things … so it’s fun to try to imagine myself back in time, to all of the different seasons in my life that I have read this book. Hmmm – why did I outline THAT passage? How funny …. A lot of times the outlines or underlines are just my way of communicating to Salinger: “I. LOve. This. Part.” or “This part is just perfect.” There is no other reason for most of those markings. So I can’t get rid of that dog-eared copy! It means the world to me!<\/p>\n

Other cherished books:<\/p>\n

— my hard-bound ancient copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. Red leather cover, with a gold stamp of the white rabbit checking his watch on the front. The pages are smooth, almost shiny, and thick – obviously a quality book, made a long time ago. Buying a new copy of it would feel sacrilegious. This particular edition was released in 1911. They just don’t make books like that anymore. I’m talking about it as an object.<\/p>\n

— my dog-eared taped-together copy of Mating: A Novel<\/a>\"\"<\/i>by Norman Rush – so written on and worked over that I could never lend it to someone. I have read that book 3 times through – and each time was a totally different experience. For a while, I felt that that book explained my own life to me. Not so much now – but then. The notes I have scribbled in the margins or in the blank pages in the back are like stepping-stones through time.<\/p>\n

— my falling-apart copy of Catch-22<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. Only read that awesome book once, and I think it’s time I took it up again. One of the best books ever written, in my opinion. What an achievement. My copy is just a crappy paper-back … with the cover fallen off … but for some reason, having THIS edition – which obviously is from 30 years ago – as opposed to a shiny new copy – just seems good and right.<\/p>\n

— my taped-together copy of Hopeful Monsters<\/a>\"\"<\/i>by Nicholas Mosley, another all-time fave. I just don’t want to go and get a spanking new copy … That book, with coffee stains on some of the pages, underlines, notes to myself … is precious. Also – the front cover actually caught fire<\/i> by lying too close to one of my candles … so the top corner is actually singed black. No WAY could I ever get rid of this book. It’s a marvelous book, one of my all-time favorites – I poured my LIFE into that book … so I think it’s just so appropriate that the object itself is so BATTERED and BRUISED. I love that copy of that book.<\/p>\n

— my 5 Nancy Lemann books: Ritz of the Bayou<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, Lives of the Saints<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, Sportsman’s Paradise<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, The Fiery Pantheon: A Novel<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, and Malaise<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. She is a wonderful writer, a madcap quirtkyk Southern writer, so funny, so terrific – and her books are very hard to find, even though she’s contemporary. I got half of those for half-price at The Strand, and I fear that if I lose them I will never track them down again. I guard those books with my life. They have given me such joy.<\/p>\n

— all my Lucy Maud Montgomery novels. I probably have 40 of them. From the entirety of the Anne of Green Gables series all the way down to her recently-unearthed TERRIBLE short stories. Cannot get rid of one of those little books. It would hurt too much. Also – some of them are now kind of hard to find. Like Rilla of Ingleside<\/i> – which she always thought was her best book. Hard to find now. The Blue Castle<\/i> – which is MY favorite of her books – hard to find. Jane of Lantern Hill<\/i> – you can’t just walk into a Barnes and Noble and find that book now. You could about 10 years ago, when Montgomery was having her heyday – but not so much now. I have every single paperback … all lined up in a row … Irreplaceable, again.<\/p>\n

— all my Madeleine L’Engle books. I have every single one the woman ever wrote. From her phenomenal fiction: A Wrinkle in Time<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, plus the many many many others – to her non-fiction memoir-style books (total favorites of mine), down to her theological writing … her Christian books are also kind of hard to find in mainstream stores. I ordered them online. Her Genesis trilogy is phenomenal … sniff, sniff … Those books, again, have gotten me through some rocky points. I have her poetry. I have her illustrated children’s books. Etc. You get the point. If Madeleine L’Engle wrote it, I want it.<\/p>\n

— my massive Collected Works of Jane Austen <\/i>– all her novels in one volume. A huge tome. It has a paper cover – which is ripping – and on it is an old-fashioned line drawing of a mansion with pillars. All her books in this one volume, so you can imagine – it’s a big fat book. I’ve considered getting rid of it, and then buying new volumes of all of her individual books … but I just can’t. It’s too beautiful an object.<\/p>\n

— my copy of Moby Dick<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, another one of my all-time favorite reading experiences. The book was almost TOO dense, TOO rich, TOO good. I could barely deal with it. Every sentence coming at me was so brilliant, so unbelievable … I felt like I needed a break, a break to just deal with the brilliance. It’s like how my cat Sammy used to eat sometimes: he would get so overwhelmed at all the goodies put before him, so discombobbled, that he would sink into a state of paralysis – staring at his bowl of food with intense anxiety. Reading Moby Dick <\/i>was like that for me. The copy I have is no big deal – I think it’s Vintage? I mean, they make good-looking books – and this is a good-looking book – but it’s really about my first time reading that book – and all the notes I took in the margin. All the exclamation points – the feverish underlining … Every time I flip through the pages I am transported back to when I first read it (well – I read it in high school but that doesn’t count – I mean, first CHOSE to read it). I’m telling you. Most exciting reading experience ever. I love my copy of that book because of the memories it holds in its pages.<\/p>\n

— my exquisite copy of Riders to the Sea<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by John Millington Synge – given to me by an old family friend, a book collector and dealer – who knew that such a thing would mean the world to me. It is a precious object. You can tell when you pick it up. The dark green cover … cloth … the slightly embossed lettering of the title – subtle, elegant, not flashy … and the beautiful spareness of the language on the pages. It is one of the nicest objects that I actually own.<\/p>\n

— my The Collected Poems<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. Had the volume (edited by Ted Hughes – very controversially) since I was in high school, when the Plath mania began. The Plath mania has calmed down, thank the good Lord, but I still love her poems, and love to read through them from time to time. I know a couple by heart. That book, again filled with my high-school-age jottings, is a piece of my own personal history. I have pages of looseleaf stuck in the book – with my own ramblings on it. I have also annotated some of the poems – as to how they correspond with real-life events in her journals, or in her letters to her mother. I don’t care so much about real-life events now, and can love Plath’s poems just as they are – poems – but it is amazing to me to flip through, and see how much STUFF I have crowded on the page. Getting a spanking new copy just wouldn’t seem right.<\/p>\n

These books are not just books to me. They have become part of my own biography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my more constant activities in my life is weeding through the stacks of books I own, and getting rid of non-essentials. You may be surprised at how difficult this is. I have to get into a very cold-hearted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[630,983,712,259,245,183,79,642,815,95,88],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102536,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209\/revisions\/102536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}