Too Little Time, Too Many Books!

From Second Verse, Second Chorus, by Lyn Burnstine, 2007, my 2nd Volume of Memoir

The librarian in my little prairie town knew that were she to limit me to age-appropriate reading material, I’d have nothing to read. I’d already been through a complete collection of Elsie Dinsmore books from a neighbor’s attic, the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House  series, and my own full set of Louisa May Alcott’s stories (at least a dozen times) before I had even begun to ravage the Villa Grove library.
    I married and moved away. I checked out the library in Biloxi, Mississippi, where I was a newlywed Air Force wife, but found it to have only old moldy books, disappointingly outdated. Then a strange thing happened—strange, considering how important a library had been to me in my childhood: living and doing became more important than reading. For many years I substituted domestic arts— cooking, knitting, sewing clothes for people and dolls, upholstering furniture, painting and decorating—as well as pressed-flower artwork (a hobby that got out of hand and became a career for a while), and, of course, music—the playing and learning of it.
            I  read a few women’s magazines along the way, then, gradually, books crept back into my life. I adored Harry Golden and Alexander King to whose writings I had been exposed by TV talk shows.  For the first year that I lived next door to a sublime cook—a former food columnist and the world’s best pie maker (she taught my eldest daughter to make apple pies and Concord grape pies to die for)—I read cookbooks voraciously. As my folk singing career took wing, I collected and  devoured every book on American folk music and folklore I could find. When self-help books came out, I read themhungrily. (Years later, during one of my move-inspired bookshelf purges, I said “That’s it, I’ve helped myself all I’m going to,” and gave the whole mess of self-help books away). Then came a long period of reading only nonfiction: poetry, biographies, memoirs, journals,  and natural history—I considered fiction a waste of time. Those genres still comprise the contents of my bookshelves, along with manuals on writing and photography, and an enviable library of folk music and folklore books. These are all still my treasures that I reread and rely on for inspiration and for looking up remembered favorite lines and songs.
    When I moved to this senior complex where we have our own library of mostly light reading—many of them mysteries—it set the stage for me to become a mystery buff, while wheelchair-bound after orthopedic surgeries during those first two winters. I now consume them; I scarf them down like a starving  woman—sometimes at the rate of two or three a week. I wait for my favorite mystery writers—Sue Grafton, Patricia   Cornwell and Nevada Barr—to release their newest ones. Meanwhile, I fill in with my second stringers—James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman, Tony Hillerman—and dig out old musty Agatha Christies from a huge box given to me by a fellow mystery nut.
    I love being able to get information from the internet; I hate reading more than a paragraph or two on that screen. A true bibliophile, I love the feel of a book in my hands—the perfect heft of a medium-sized hardcover book. I hate small, fat paperbacks; I don’t like large-print books, either. (I finally figured out why: since I’m a line reader rather than a word reader, the line spreads out too much to take it all in at once, so instead of the big print easing eye-strain,  it creates it.)
    One of the things I love most about being published is knowing that someone somewhere is holding and savoring my book, as I do so many other writers’ works. Some of the authors have a special appeal, beyond their mastery of words, because I have met or studied with them: May Sarton; William Least Heat-Moon; Madeline L’Engle;  William Doerflinger (who wrote the definitive book on sailors’ and lumbermen’s folk songs); and Charles Neely (my father’s best friend from college who wrote a  book of songs and stories from Little Egypt—Southern Illinois), among others. Some I’ve only seen and heard in readings, such as Diane Ackerman, Anita Shreve and Galway Kinnell, but that lends a certain personal touch, too.
    It has taken me most of my life to realize that I don’t have to finish every book I start. Now when I bring home four or five library books, if I don’t love any one of them, I give myself permission to not read it. Even though a reluctant latecomer to the internet, I have, nevertheless, learned to traverse part of the electronic highway. Somehow, the road to the library eluded me. The first time I managed to get into the library system without an hour-long frustrating struggle, I ended up ordering the same book twice. I gave up in discouragement and went to the library, where a pleasant, helpful desk clerk did it for me. Eventually, when I was feeling less rushed and more patient, I conquered that mountain, so that now I can methodically order a few titles at a time from my long list of hundreds I want to read ( growing all the time).
    When I still had my big marriage bed—long after the marriage was over—I would bring home a half-dozen books on disparate subjects and spread them over half of the queen-sized bed. I felt like a queen, spending the evening nestled down under the covers and sipping from those delicious wines, tasting first one, then another. Now in my single bed, I still manage to have a stack of books alongside on a wicker chest—a selection of all the kinds I love, so I can dip into whatever my mood dictates. Every newly-discovered  writer leads me to more books for my list. There will never be enough time, but how sweet that is.