Real Books = Still Good

I rid my life of more books this week – not a lot, just a single box.  I tried something different this time: a new concept from Books-A-Million ( HQ’d here), which seems to be taking your basic well-run second-hand media store (I think of McKay’s in Knoxville) and attempting to make a chain of it – 2nd and Charles.

(For those not keeping up, over the past few years, I have rid my life of a ridiculous surfeit of books by giving them to church rummage sales, donating them to library used book stores, to Goodwill and such, giving many boxes to an acquaintance in Fort Wayne whom I knew would distribute them to interested Catholic types, selling some online, leaving some in bags in church vestibules with a ‘FREE” sign on them – yeah, that was me.  Endless. But they (the books) keep procreating. Catholic books!)

They bought them all for the expected 10% of cover price, cash, twice that for store credit.  I browsed the store, and am not sure if the concept will succeed. The prices are fairly high – about half cover price in most cases.  Even though the stock was good and has the advantage over a thrift store of being well-organized and clean, there are so many ways to obtain used books now, a chain like this seems to be a latecomer, and one that probably won’t catch up.

Then today, we went..to..a..bookstore.

Well, yes, we did.

It was the legendary downtown establishment Jim Reed Books which for some reason, I’d never explored before.  The place is certainly a bookstore, but it’s more than that.  He carries a great deal of ephemera and other doo-dads, and the place,  with books piled high to the ceiling, images of Pee-Wee Herman (apparently a favorite) everywhere and boxes of old advertisements and biological diagrams to explore is absorbing – as in, it feels as if you are being absorbed. Absorbed  into a small little world which is like the bigger world outside except it is a bit more comforting because even as all the weirdness and wildness of the world is right there in those dusty stacks, what is also in those rows of antique blue-bound books with firm black printing on the spine are the valiant and sometimes even successful attempts to make sense of that wild world, or at least to point out how funny and how beautiful it is.  If you’re at all interested in the problem, you will be absorbed.

When I’m on the Internet, I’m surrounded by information, which is a place I love to be in, but it always feels so unfinished, not only because even more information is just a click away, but because it is virtual, uncontained, unbound. Which is a strength, but also a weakness.  Crowded in by untidy rows and stacks of bound volumes recent and ancient, I feel a little more secure, surrounded by words and thoughts that have beginnings and ends, that can be opened and shut.  I think both experiences are real, and point to something deeper and authentic about the nature of knowledge and wisdom. As we keep saying here, we need both.

Which gets me to what I bought, what I didn’t, and why.

So yes, I bought a book. I did actually hesitate and consider my ongoing Book Purging Quest, but I finally decided that since it was only one book, it was okay.

It’s up there in the header: Rim of Christendom: A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino, Pacific Coast Pioneer.

I flipped through it, thinking “Kino. Kino. Who is that?” The name was familiar. The general outline was familiar – Kino was a Jesuit missionary in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The book was big and fat and in excellent condition, but I could not place Kino. I knew I’d heard of him before, and my subconscious associated the hearing of him with a place and experience, not just another book,  but I couldn’t think of what that might be  until I opened one of the maps attached within the text and saw the scope of his travels, which included what is now Arizona, and I realized, well, of course - it was during our 2004 trip to Arizona that I’d first learned about Kino. He is practically one of the patron saints of the area.

So I bought the book, which is 644 pages, is very dense yet also rather winningly written, and has maps.  Several fold-out maps attached to pages within the text.

(Six bucks!)

Now, one could argue that an online version of this same information could be great as well – with hyperlinks to maps of locations mentioned throughout the text, as well as to photographs and original documents.  Well, I don’t think you should argue. That would be awesome and useful.  But so is the book.

So that’s what I bought, and I’m looking forward to reading it over the next couple of weeks in a way that I am not looking forward to finishing Freedom. (So why finish it, you ask? Because I think I’m going to have Strong Words after it’s done, that’s why.)

What I didn’t buy was a small volume that also caught my eye in the religion section – The Bible in Spain by George Borrow.  I got the gist of it from a quick scan – 19th century Englishman seeks to bring True Christianity to papist Spaniards by giving them Bibles, and it certainly looked interesting, but I thought, “You know, I bet this is on Gutenburg or something, I could read it there.”  I got home – and it is. I can put it on Kindle for free, and for some reason, that’s fine.  I’ll probably read the whole thing that way, won’t miss holding a hard copy, and will be glad for the experience. Why the difference? I’m not sure. Perhaps it has something to do with my sympathies?  That I feel a sympathetic interest in Kino’s story, but Borrow’s tale makes me curious but hostile? So I am content to keep the guy at a distance, out of my house?

I really don’t know.  But there you have it: the physical book I gladly purchased and the one I didn’t, but will gladly read on a screen.

Takes all kinds.

Oh, and look what met me in the religion section, first off.

(taken w/phone)

I opened it up carefully, alternately hopeful and fearful that it might actually be signed. That would have been too strange and even upsetting. It wasn’t.

So, you know, if anyone wants a (slightly) used copy of The How To Book of the Mass, go down to Reed’s Books on 3rd.

Not surprisingly, the boys loved it.  Fiddling with an old typewriter, Joseph said, in a burst of inspiration, “Oh! I know how a typewriter works! There’s a little stamp for each letter and it prints it on the paper!”

Like that was the most amazing, fantastic thing in the world, to have thought of such a thing.

And who knows.

Maybe it was.

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