Building a Library, Book by Book

by

Nicki Leone

I’m dreaming. I’m in a room with rich dark wood paneling. There are leather chairs gathered in front of the large fireplace with soft blankets thrown over their high backs. The tall windows look out on a black night. The walls are lined from floor to ceiling with  bookshelves, titles just visible from the warm gold glow of the Tiffany lamps. I’m standing in front of one of the shelves dressed in high heels and my favorite black jeans and velvet shirt. My hair is down. I’m running my fingers along the spines of the books, looking at the titles—a glass of wine almost forgotten in my other hand. The remains of my dinner—roast duck, perhaps, with wild rice—sit on a tray on the sideboard by one of the windows. The room is warm and the books are full of promise, and the wind blowing the rain against the panes of glass is the only sound besides the occasional pop and hiss from the wood burning in the fireplace. I know, in my dream, that these are all the books I have ever wanted to read. I just need to choose one. My fingers stop at the smooth feel of a hardcover spine just above my head. I can’t see the title, so I stretch, and reach, feeling the heat from the fireplace at my back and breathing in the smell of wood and paper and ink, my pulse tap-tapping with the excitement of having a new book—smooth and weighty—in my hands . . .

We all have our fantasies, but it is a rare thing for them to come true. Six months ago, the organization for which I work, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA), got one of those phone calls that are the stuff of a  book lover’s fantasies. The owner of the Camberely Hotels—a collection of five star luxury inns throughout the South—called to say they had decided to put a library in one of their hotels for the guests, and could SIBA help them with the books? He was willing to buy a lot of books. He wanted good books. He wanted hardcovers if possible. And he wanted us to choose the books. “I want,” said Ian Lloyd-Jones, “the ultimate Southern library. Can you pick it out for me?”

Oh yeah, I could do that.

The project was for the newly-created library of the Martha Washington Inn located in Abingdon, Virginia, a massive old manor house on the national historic register that is nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains. It has stood since the 1830’s—originally as the home of an American general, then as a Women’s College named for the first of the first ladies. Locals refer to the house as “the Martha.” During the Civil War, the building served as a hospital to both Confederate and Union troops, and during the Depression, when the college closed for lack of students, it became for awhile the home for actors and actresses appearing at the Barter Theater across the street. Patrica Neal, Ernest Borgnine, and Ned Beatty have all lived at the Martha. The building was turned into a hotel in the thirties (it was a favorite of Eleanor Roosevelt) and managed, over the next eighty years, to avoid any ill-advised “modernization” and to keep its original architectural character intact. The latest owner has been scrupulously careful in renovating the buildings that comprise the Inn to preserve its character. It was his idea that the west parlor—which had been set up as a conference room at some point in the eighties—should be turned into a library for the guests. The original house had been built for the then-whopping sum of $15,000. The current owner wanted to spend $15,000 just on the books. 

Coming up with a list of books that belonged in “the ultimate Southern library” was a fascinating task unto itself. SIBA put out a call to the three hundred plus independent bookstores that make up its membership, and invited them to send in lists of the titles they considered de rigueur for a comprehensive library of Southern literature. For a few happy weeks, I found myself  pouring over spread sheets and tables of Southern titles as stores sent in their sometimes eccentric ideas of what belonged in a Southern library. Surprisingly, with the possible exception of To Kill a Mockingbird, there wasn’t much duplication in the submissions. Booksellers from Louisiana were adamant that Tim Gautreaux had to be included, those from North Carolina insisted on Lee Smith. It was clear every store had their local favorites. Some stores sent in lists comprised almost entirely of poets—almost as if they were afraid that without their advocacy, poetry would be overlooked completely. Others sent in details of the rare, the unusual and the charming books upon their own shelves, including a first edition signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird—one of six editions submitted—that was valued at $16,000. Eventually we ended up with a list of over eight hundred titles.

Then I sat down and had a nice long phone conversation with the owner about the books on the list, and why he needed each and every one in the Martha Library. The conversation went something like this:

Owner: Who is Ron Rash?

Me: Oh, you have to have Ron Rash—he’s a wonderful writer!

Owner: Okay! Who is Larry Brown?

Me: Oh you have to have Larry Brown—he is one of my favorite authors!

Owner: Okay! Who is . . .

In the end, he selected most of the books on the list—except for the children’s books (apparently, the Martha is the kind of place you go to when you want to get away from your kids), and very expensive collectible books, since, as he put it “my guests sometimes have trouble remembering that the towels don’t belong to them. I don’t want to tempt them with a rare edition of To Kill a Mockingbird!” I reluctantly agreed that might not be wise. Then the owner said “None of us know anything about putting together a library. Will you come up and set it up for us?”

Would I?

Which is how I came to be staring up at the wide imposing front porch of the Martha one late summer evening, stretching after a six-hour drive and watching the shadows fall across its fifteen-foot high windows as the sun set below the mountains behind us. 

I walked into the lobby carrying only the things I usually travel with—my computer, my make-up, and a small suitcase that had more books than clothes. “You’re the book lady!” exclaimed the woman at the reception desk. I agreed that I was. “We’re all so excited!” she said. She pointed out the door that led to the as-yet-unseen library, but alas, it was locked for the evening, so I took my key and went in search of my suite. The Martha is a historic building—with all the usual eccentricities of old buildings. The beautiful hardwood floors were sometimes uneven. The old manor house was rather a maze of connected buildings and out-buildings. The directions to my room went something like “Take the elevator to the third floor and take a right. Make a sharp u-turn. Take a left down the next hall. If you find yourself going up any steps, you’ve gone too far and missed your room . . .” It took me a little while to actually find the elevator. 

I had dinner in the dining room (“Take the elevator to the first floor . . . go left, go halfway down the hall and look for the stairs on your left . . . go down the stairs, look to your left for the double doors . . .”).  My waitress saw me seated alone with a book and asked “Are you the book lady?” I admitted to it. “We can’t wait to see what the library looks like,” she said, and brought me a “amuse-bouche of raspberry sorbet with a dash of balsamic vinegar.” I ordered the sea bass over wild rice that was the evening’s special and a cup of coffee. It was a gorgeous meal. I’m not usually too hungry after a long drive but it would have been sinful not to finish everything on the plate. Even the accompanying red cabbage was mild and delicious. And the coffee was excellent—which was a relief because I’m not often happy with hotel coffee. I finished another chapter of my book (Nature’s Engraver: The Life of Thomas Bewick) and tottered back to my suite, falling into my four poster bed, wondering what was behind that locked library door.

The next morning I got up early, drank nearly a pot of room service coffee and then went to find the hotel manager, whose office, I was told, was almost buried in boxes of books. He was a cheerful young man named Chris, and sitting on his desk was a copy of The Historic Architecture of Western North Carolina, which had apparently caught his eye from one of the boxes. Chris arranged to have the boxes all moved down, and took me to see the library for the first time. He unlocked the door, turned the brass knob, and we slipped into the room. And I laughed out of sheer delight.

There before me was a room two stories high, lined with floor to ceiling bookcases (complete with a rolling ladder) and on the east and west walls, several floor to ceiling windows. There was a large fireplace at one end, and the room was comfortably full of heavy leather chairs and sofas, a gaming table, and (hidden discretely in an alcove) a computer. “This is wonderful” I breathed, and Chris smiled happily.

We had a short discussion about the boxes of books that were being stacked up by the door, Chris telling me that the staff loved the idea of the library but didn’t know where to shelve anything. He asked what the sections would be called—he wanted to have brass plates engraved for each bookcase. “Let me get things unpacked, and we’ll see what we have,” I told him. He mentioned a plan to put colored dots on the spines of the books to show what section they belonged in. I did my best to dissuade him from this idea because the room was too pretty to mar with hundreds of colored Avery labels. I sent him off with a few suggested sites for finding good-looking book stands and bookends, and then I took a deep breath and turned my attention to the boxes.

I spent that first day happily unpacking, checking off titles, and making piles of books around the room. I knew I would need the most room for fiction, so I gave it the west wall. There was one center case where the shelves were more widely spaced—that became the place for Art, Photography and Architecture books. A narrow tall case was designated “Southern Humor,” a wide imposing case became the home for history titles. The case opposite became biography and memoir.

As I unpacked and piled and shelved, I started to get a feel for what was actually there. Lists of books are wonderful things, but they are only theoretical. It wasn’t until I had the books in front of me that I realized, for example, that someone at the Louisiana State University Press must be very happy because we had every novel published under their “Voices of the South” series. It wasn’t until I started organizing the books I thought belonged under “history” that I discovered that nearly half of them were about the founding of Jamestown. (It’s been a popular subject this year, the 400^th anniversary of its founding). I found it odd that, although most of the books were fiction, there were no novelists whose last names began with the letter “N.”

I shelved the books the way a bookseller would, not the way a librarian would—with an eye for display and a willingness to disregard alphabetical order if it meant I could make some books look more enticing to the browser. I faced out my favorite novels and the books that had the prettiest covers. I made sure that in the case I designated for poetry (the store who sent the list should feel gratified; every suggestion was taken) the works of Gerald Barrax were prominently displayed. I put all the Library of America collection—beautiful in the sleek black jackets, their bright white pages interrupted only by the sewn-in cloth ribbon book mark that comes in every volume—all these I put on display in the center of the room, atop one of the low book cases and within easy reach. There, like a regiment of literary soldiers, were the complete plays of Tennessee Williams, the novels of Faulkner, Capote, Welty and O’Connor, the folk tales of Zora Neal Hurston. While I worked, the hotel staff wandered in, one at a time, to look around and tell me again how much they were looking forward to the library. “You should have seen this room before they installed the bookcases,” said the man who handled the advertising. It was just this huge square table surrounded by chairs.” Another woman who worked the afternoon shift and couldn’t help herself from peering into the as yet unpacked boxes commented, “We couldn’t believe it when we saw them installing the book shelves.” Many of the staff asked what I liked to read, or who my favorite authors were on the slowly filling shelves.

I worked through lunch with only endless cups of coffee to sustain me, and by dinnertime every book was on a shelf. And although there was a lot of space still to fill, the room was no longer a work in progress. It was a library. It was without a doubt the most pleasant day I have had since I first unpacked my own home library when I moved two years ago. I went up to change for dinner, feeling tired and immensely happy, and then wandered back down to the dining room where my waitress from the night before asked me how the project was going. I was much hungrier this evening, so I ordered the duck, an appetizer of morels with goat cheese confit, a spinach salad with tasso ham and candied pecans, and even dessert—the flan,  which came in three separate sherry glasses, one chocolate, one almond flavored, and one with raspberry sauce. This time when I retired to my room I was too excited to sleep, so I read the manuscript of a novel a friend had given me, and hoped that one day it would find its way to the shelves downstairs.

The next morning I was down in the library again, this time with my laptop as well as my coffee. I had told the Martha’s managers that I thought it would probably only take me two days to unpack and set up the library, but I was already wishing I hadn’t been so efficient. I spent the day creating a catalogue of the books, marking the shelves and sections where they could be found, and making any notes I thought might be useful to a hotel staff that, after all, is not used to answering questions about books. I wandered along the shelves, dressed in my favorite red high heels, my black jeans and my velvet shirt, running my fingers over the spines and whispering the names of the writers with low-voiced, muttered reverence—Reynolds Price, Shirley Ann Grau, Doris Betts, Tony Early—I’m sure had anyone looked in at that moment, they would have though me slightly mad. I started typing notes into a spreadsheet: “Signed by the author,” “First edition,” “On display in the center of the room.”  The sun poured through the high windows, traveling along the wood floor as the time passed. I wanted never to leave.

Eventually, though, I couldn’t pretend I had anything more to do, so I sat down for about twenty minutes and wrote down all the titles of books that I didn’t own, but would like to. Since I was being paid for this, it seemed only right to spend the money on books. Chris came in again as I was finishing up and hitting “save” on my computer. He looked up at the shelves that were too high for anyone to reach. “We still have a lot of space,” he noted. I nodded. He brought his smiling eyes back down to me. “I guess we’ll have to get more books.”

As I drove away the next morning, southwards down out of the Blue Ridge mountains and towards Pilot Mountain standing like a sentinel in the distance, my head was whirling with all the books that could go on the next list.

Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She supported her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that her college career and attending scholarships and financial aid loans supported her predilection for working as a bookseller. She has been in the book business for over twenty years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki has been a book reviewer for several magazines, her local public radio station and local television stations. She was one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network, and as Managing Editor of BiblioBuffet. Plus, she blogs at Will Read for Food. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of varying numbers of dogs and cats. Contact Nicki.