ORIGINAL POST DATE: February 8, 2006

My only association with Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr. is from my high school English class, and having to read The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table. I don't recall anything about that book, but it must have been better than reading James Fennimore Cooper (whom I dubbed "James Fenimore Awful"), since I didn't bother to come up with a derisive nick-name for Holmes. Here instead is someone who speaks deeply to one of the major conundrums of my life:

"What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt a hundred?" -Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.

Consider too that Holmes lived in a time that didn't produce the millions of new titles every year that we are faced with having to prioritize our reading lists from. The task is daunting.

Take for example one area of reading that I enjoy: Mythology. I had recently reached a place of comfort having acquired a selection of books by Joseph Campbell, and a few titles by Mircea Eliade, thinking I had enough good titles on mythology to stop looking for any more. Yesterday I discovered that Karen Armstrong has published a new book, this time on the subject of mythology, called A Short History of Myth. I have read many of Karen Armstrong's books, so now I feel compelled get that one too, since I am very curious to read what she has to say about mythology. Just when I thought I had at least one subject covered, I add another book to the pile. Is there no end?

I like the nostalgic feeling the Holmes quote provides, with the thought that reading 100 books in a lifetime is as much as is attainable. There was a time then, when reading 100 books (although clearly not enough) seemed like what was achievable in a lifetime. From the perspective of Holmes' time period I am doing pretty well, having read at least 100 books by now (likely many more than that), and (unless something unsuspected occurs) with many years still ahead of me.

I haven't read much the last few days. I suffered a serious brain cramp on Monday after reading a particularly mind expanding bit of Jungian psychology. It actually made my brain hurt. It was a good pain, the sort of "feel the burn" sensation that lets you know you have expanded your capacity to think, but still, the kind of pain that lets you know when it's time to back off. I decided to give it a rest and to allow these new ideas sink in and mellow among the other collected ideas from my lifetime of reading. I have taken refuge, for a few days anyway, in the understanding that I am doing a pretty good job, at least by 19th century standards, of getting my fill of books.

That is, of course, until the Karen Armstrong book arrives from Amazon.

ORIGINAL POST DATE: August 29, 2005

I came across this great quote on the Alibris website:

"The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beast that perish." - Alfred Edward Newton

I am regularly buying books, and it wasn't too long ago that I realized I had reached the point where I couldn't possibly read all the books I have in this one lifetime. This realization didn't actually stop me from buying even more books (i.e., I received three new books in the mail last week), but it did give me a more determined sense of what I will spend my finite lifetime reading. I now will not finish a book just to be sure I have given it a fair try if it isn't satisfying my expectations. If it doesn't grab me by the end of the second chapter, out it goes. There are plenty more where that one came from.

Where there are many books, there are many notebooks as well. I need any number of notebooks to record my thoughts about what I read, and pages to make the connections from book to book. This makes me wonder if what Alfred so comfortingly had to say about book collecting can equally be applied to the accumulation of notebooks. I think it can be said that the buying of more notebooks than one can fill in a lifetime is also a reaching toward infinity. Instead of experiencing a sense of infinity through information coming into the mind through reading, notebooks provide an experience of an infinity of blank pages to fill with what the mind makes of it all. If the infinite is not a part of the process of personal expression that we engage in with our Moleskinei notebooks, then would it really matter that the paper they are made of is acid-free? Yet this is a very important aspect of the success of these notebooks, that what we take the time to put between the pages will last, if not forever, at least as long as we need it to. Any effort at cheating the effects of time, such as choosing paper that will not disintegrate in a few years, is without doubt wrapped up with a passion for the infinite.

I must also address the second half of the quote, the "beast that perish" part. I have checked with my resident perishable beasts about collecting books, and as you might expect they disagreed with what Mr. Newton has to say about it. My cat, who has asked to remain anonymous, said she felt she was speaking for all domestic felines in stating that reading is over rated. "Books are for those who have no imaginations of their own, I simply have no use for them." The idea that her superior sense of imagination and clear sense of life purpose would put her at a lower place than a book collector struck her as being so absurd that she refused to discuss it any further with me.

My dog, Pearl, (who takes any opportunity to see her name in print and so wishes not to remain anonymous), says that it makes no sense at all that she should be considered beneath the book collector since you can't eat books. "What's the point, they don't even taste good? Why collect something like that, where's the passion in that? Clearly this book man has an overly high opinion of himself, but the bottom line is that book collecting is completely pointless." Pearl went back to watching the squirrels at the birdfeeder, and so I figured she was finished, but then she turned around and asked, "Why are humans so worried about infinity anyway? You don't have to reach for it, it is right in front of you all the time." Pearl has returned to her Zen-like meditation on the squirrels. She is sitting so still, I think I will make a sketch of her in my notebook.