I haven’t read many of the books yet but I am setting myself a goal to read more of the Booker Prize nominees and winners in 2024. I will update this list as I complete a book.
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998 winner) – completed Feb. 4, 2024. This seemed a very insubstantial book to win this prize, certainly not one of McEwan’s top books. I found it trite and the ending contrived and silly. The writing was beautiful, as always, but the characters were not at all sympathetic and the life observations were few and far between. Looking at the other shortlisted books for that year, perhaps this was the best of the bunch. I wonder if it was awarded in recognition of his body of work, rather than this particular work.
A bibliophile, by one definition available through a Google search, is a person who collects or has a great love of books. That is me. But more than the books themselves, I have a great love of reading. I love reading physical books, magazines, and newspapers. I love reading articles and now I read entire books on my phone, computer, and e-reader. I don’t know what the correct word is for someone who just loves to read, regardless of format. But it’s broader than just bibliophile.
When I was a small child, we lived far out in the country, on a dirt road. Our nearest neighbors were pig farmers. a mile away. We had one car and only my father drove; my mother never learned to drive. I never visited a library until I started school. The closest I came to a book store at that time was the small corner store in the hamlet about five miles away that had a rack of magazines and a revolving stand of Little Golden Books .
My mother loved to read and had her nose in a book as often as she could. I do not remember ever having my parents read TO me. We had no library at home. I read anything I could get my hands on, which at home consisted of a few magazines, a small collection of Hardy Boys mystery books that my brothers had, Readers Digest condensed books that my mother read, and later the Bible when my parents bought me a children’s Bible after I announced I wanted to go to church. I remember reading some portfolio-sized soft-cover book about Christmas that was in the house and learning the songs in it and asking my parents what various words meant. There was no dictionary in the house and this was decades before the Internet. A treat for me was when my father would stop at the corner store and let me pick out a Little Golden Book to take home and read, over and over.
My parents separated when I was ten and that meant that my mother and I went to live with her parents in a suburb of Philadelphia for two years. I was given several books by my mother and my aunts as Christmas or birthday presents. I remember The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, Heidi, Swiss Family Robinson, and Little Women.
I must have visited the school libraries in my elementary schools but I have no memory of them or the visits. The first library I remember visiting was the public library in the town that my mother and I moved to when I was twelve, Wayne, Pennsylvania. I remember wandering the shelves on my own and picking out whatever I wanted to read and bringing the books home to read. No one ever bothered me or tried to tell me what to read or not read, and I explored the world of books in a very haphazard way. I remember picking up one book that was clearly an adult book that was a story of a white woman taken captive by native Americans and how she was absorbed into the culture and became a wife of one of the men in the tribe. That is the only book I remember from that library although I know I checked out many books, willy nilly.
In eighth grade at Radnor Junior High School in Wayne, I had a wonderful English teacher who changed my life. His name was Charles Crawford and he assigned great books for the class. I specifically remember being assigned The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and falling in love with his writing and then reading everything I could get my hands on by Ray Bradbury for the next ten years. I had a small collection of Ray Bradbury books in paperback for many years and I still have my original copy of The Martian Chronicles printed in 1967 or 1968 in my very small library of about 100 physical books.
Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
I did NOT become a librarian because I loved to read or because I loved books!!! I became a librarian because I was hired to work in college and university libraries due to my study of foreign languages and those libraries were always looking for people who could read and understand other languages. After two years as a student assistant in my college library and another seven years as a library worker in two other academic libraries, I completed my master’s degree and became a professional librarian. I fell into librarianship. I was good at the work and I believe strongly in the underlying principles of librarianship: providing free and unfettered access to information and helping people to find and use the information they need – and to think critically. But I never aspired to be a librarian. My love of reading and my career as a librarian are two separate things. In fact, once I got into positions where I was hiring other people to work in libraries, I always rated negatively any prospective worker who said they wanted to work in libraries or became a librarian because they loved books or reading. I always felt like telling them: “Get a life!!!”
The first actual bookstore I remember was a cramped little bookstore that sat on the corner right before you got to the Wayne train station. I used all of my allowance to buy books there. I remember walking through that store, picking up and examining books and deciding which book I was going to buy. I discovered some wonderful books there that broadened my world view, including Hiroshima and other books by John Hersey, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I, Robot and other books by Isaac Asimov, The October Country, The Illustrated Man and other books by Ray Bradbury, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and many more. I had my first bookcase in my room and intuitively organized my books first by genre, then by author, then by title. I was a natural cataloger and loved the years I spent working as a cataloger in libraries, cataloging whatever crossed my desk.
In my lifetime, I purchased thousands of books. In my many moves to new locations, the thing that always made me feel like I was home was when I could unpack and shelve my books on my bookcases. As I got older, I got tired of carting around all those books and I periodically would purge my collections and give the books away to co-workers. I never tried to sell them. Working in libraries, I always had a group of people who were eager to have any books that I chose to give away.
As I rose through the ranks in libraries and eventually had my own office, I would keep some books on bookcases in my office and others at home. I have always considered the books on my bookcases to be a window into my soul and personality. The books in my office always contained my textbooks, dictionaries, and works of literature for the six foreign languages I have studied. In my office, I also included works of history or social awareness that would quietly announce to anyone interested what I believed. There would also be some professional works of librarianship. Travel books always featured heavily. My cookbooks I kept at home, as well as most of my fiction.
As I got older and grew more tired of packing up and carting books around to new locations, the bulk of my physical book collection was in my offices. By the time I retired from my last job at Florida Atlantic University, only my cookbooks and some very personal books were at home. The following images are of my bookshelves in my last office as Dean of University Libraries at Florida Atlantic University. I left 95% pf my books to the library or to colleagues there, including most of the cookbooks I had at home.
My current physical library is contained in one small bookcase and consists primarily of a few cookbooks, some books with sentimental value, a few titles I consider seminal, and some mementos. The story this bookcase tells me is of a pared down life but with a focus on travel, cooking, and intellectual and emotional challenge. Another story it tells me is that I have given up on the illusion of control. The books are not organized by genre, by author, or by title. Like my life, they are a jumble, with connections that may not be obvious.
My reading now is almost entirely digital, either on my phone, computer or my e-reader. This is due to my declining vision from Fuchs Dystrophy. Except for a favorite mystery author, my reading is eclectic, moving between fiction, memoirs, popular science, and social work. My love of the study of foreign languages seems to be in the past, although I still love a well-written travel book or books about living in other countries.
Lifetime musings 