finding a gift

One of the pleasures of reorganizing my books is that inevitably I find I’ve got a duplicate or two. That gives me an opportunity to give away a book as a gift to someone I think will appreciate it.

gifting library

Don’t ask me how many books I own—ask how many I’ve read and passed on.

no library card

He would go to the library to write and to read books, but he wouldn’t check any of them out—wouldn’t take them home—where he had too many books to read in one lifetime.

books instead of toilet paper

They closed the libraries during the pandemic. Lucky for him he was a prepper when it came to hoarding books.

serious about books

I’m not saying he was overzealous about keeping his library intact, but his bookplate featured a human skull overwritten with the words:
‘Under Penalty of Death
Return this Book to X’.

book once owned by

Inside the cover of this book I see written the previous owner’s name, “Brett Holt.” Brett, perhaps you are dead, that would be an excuse; or you were forced by circumstance to travel light, to get rid of most of your possessions, that would be a good enough reason, otherwise I don’t know how it was you ever parted with this book.

singular path

Cut your own idiosyncratic path through literature.

bad habit or book addiction

Again I find myself buying books beyond my capacity to read them all.

well worn

When perusing another person’s bookcases, I always look for the tattered dust-jackets.

personal library

I visited the reestablished Thomas Jefferson Library in the Library of Congress yesterday. Some titles have not been replaced from the original catalog. Jefferson ordered his books according to Lord Bacon's system of the subject areas: Memory, Reason, and Imagination. Jefferson used the categories "History," "Philosophy," and "Fine Arts."

personal library

Thinking back on the simple bookshelf I built in my bedroom, the couple dozen poetry books I had hardly filled one shelf, yet they seemed a great library to me.

witnesses for the defense

There was no framed diploma on the wall of his office. But sometimes he would run a finger bumping along the spines of the books in his personal library. He thought these authors, though most long dead, must vouch for him.