Why I Have the Books I Do

by

Paul Clark

A few months ago, in an essay for BiblioBuffet, I wrote about my great book giveaway of 2006—over 1,000 books given away to local library sales. The giveaway reduced the total number of books I own to a few hundred.

The books that remain—collected over the last 30 years—for the most part have no great monetary value. If I boxed them up and brought them to a bookstore, I might walk out with enough money to buy an unabridged dictionary. My small collection of signed first editions from late 20th century writers is long gone. The 300 or so books that remain in my collection cover a variety of genres: works from the “canon,” however you may define a literary canon: contemporary literary fiction; mysteries and thrillers; books about food (not limited to cookbooks); memoirs and biographies; some art history; some random books of history; a couple of sports books; a few books of poetry . . .

I stopped the list there because my next paragraph was going to be about all the types of books I don’t have—no books on gardening . . . but wait, there’s that one and that one. No books on sports . . . except for those two I forgot about. No celebrity biographies . . . except I just remembered that one I still have. The point being that my collection, though now a shadow of its former self, seems to have at least one representative of every genre—except Civil War history; I don’t think I have any books on that topic.

The books that are left are mainly in three different areas of the house—five shelves in a built-in bookshelf in the living room, a four shelf-bookcase in the dining room holding mainly cookbooks, and three long shelves in the basement where the books are jumbled, stacked and double-shelved in a most undignified manner. (There are other bookshelves in the house, for the other members of the household. These shelves hold books on alternative healing practices, Star Wars novelizations, comic books, cozy mysteries and novels about adolescence angst and shopping.)

So why did I keep the books I still have? That will be the point of a series of essays I will contribute to BiblioBuffet over the next several months.

In my first essay, I talked a bit about how I didn’t feel as compelled to buy or own books anymore as I did in the past. I will be blunt—having three kids on the verge of entering college changes one’s perspective about spending. But these days I’m not a working author’s best friend because I depend on the library and re-sale shops and the kindness of friends’ cast-offs for so many of my books. Yes, I do feel somewhat guilty that I don’t support, in a tangible, monetary way, the livelihoods of the many hard-working and creative writers I enjoy. I try to make up this up to the working authors by making sure to talk up and support their work—suggesting titles to friends, placing orders for new books at the local library to ensure greater exposure for them, and talking about certain titles at on-line forums frequented by avid readers.

My bookshelves, even in their edited state, hold a number of books I’ve held on to for many years but still haven’t read. I STILL think that someday I will be able to read AND properly appreciate Isaiah Berlin’s The Proper Study of Mankind and Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory. The latter book (in a nutshell, Schama’s examination of the impact of nature on the history and development of western civilization) is in some ways the inspiration for these essays. Although I’m calling this series “A Walk Through My Bookshelves,” it could just as easily have been called “Bookshelves and Memory.” Each essay will take as a starting point one of the books from my shelves. The essay may be about the book itself, especially if it is a book that I think is underappreciated or unknown. The essay may start with the book but expand into an appreciation of the author. Finally, I may use a particular book merely as a starting point for an essay on the craft of writing, the perils of publishing, and the unique relationship between author and reader.

Collecting books—actually owning them and being in a house where the shelves and floors and tables were littered with literary detritus—used to be very important to me. These days, while the passion for collecting has ebbed (maybe only until the last college tuition bill is paid), the passion for reading and spreading that passion has only increased. I look forward to sharing that passion with you.


Paul Clark is a writer in suburban Chicago. By day he edits a variety of print and online business and legal publications. By night, he sometimes writes for pleasure, though he keeps these writings under a bushel, and the bushel he keeps in a dark shed outdoors. Paul co-wrote a humor column called “Loose Canons” for the late, lamented Readerville Journal. He recently purged the majority of his books from his shelves. Over a series of essays, he will write about the books that remain and why they are important to him. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it