![]() I came to feel that my large personal library was holding knowledge captive, the intellectual and creative muscle that went into each book atrophying under the weight of my negligence. During bursts of energy to reduce my inventory of possessions, my books are liberated from my apartment more liberally than any other type of possession. Now in my early thirties, I have allowed the collection to dwindle and secretly want to cull it even further. My bookshelves came to double as trophy cases, each book a piece of literary taxidermy that I had slayed. A trivial matter like having never needed a pitch-perfect theological reference in work or in casual conversation in the past would not stop me from saving them for the possible future. I rarely relinquished these books to resellers at semester’s end because I either found the resale value too low, or more often, I believed I would have occasion to return to these texts. They lived alongside the exorbitantly priced academic texts I was required to purchase as a history major in college and later in graduate school studying religion. In my early adulthood, I continued this tradition by stuffing my shelves with the entire collected works of favorite authors like Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy. Despite our family living off a single military salary, our hallways and living room were home to imposing mahogany bookcases that would have been more at home in grand estates than our suburban tract house. They signaled that book ownership was a family tradition. I kept the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings books in a neat line on the center shelf where the vintage font of the titles appeared on yellowing spines to quietly announce their inherited status to my visitors. I dutifully purchased each new book in serials like The Babysitter’s Club, Goosebumps, and Sweet Valley High and placed them in chronological order on a ceiling-high bookcase dense with dragons, historical figures, and a small army of precocious and occasionally heroic fictional girls all coming of age at once. I was not just an owner of books, I was a collector, a connoisseur, and a curator. If my childhood self could see the sparseness of my bookshelves today, she would be deeply disappointed. ![]() And I would not have nearly enough books to fill their tome-hungry caverns. But there was no mistaking the intention of the built-in shelves that lined the interior of the house to do anything but shelter and display books. ![]() I looked back over the property photos one by one, counting the stacked horizontal surfaces that could technically house porcelain pigs or framed photos as easily as they could books. ![]() People I’ve never met on Twitter also noted the abundance and splendor of shelves they had decided were most certainly for books. ![]() One friend texted, “Those bookshelves” accompanied by three heart-eyes emojis, a signal of deep attraction if there ever was one. But after sharing a link to a spacious and well-appointed cabin recently, several replies to it gave me pause. I enjoy the ritual of communally marveling at their rustic allure and remarkable affordability compared to New York City as much as I enjoy the daydreams I have of living in them. In the process of searching for a home to buy in upstate New York, I occasionally share links and photos of particularly attractive properties on Twitter and through texts. ![]()
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