If you were to judge a person by what was on his or her nightstand, I wonder what you’d think of me. Watching me as I sleep, next to a 1960s lamp, my mother’s alarm clock and some Claritin, is a turret of books. At nearly two feet high, it’s a formidable Jenga tower of ink and pulp. It just sits there smugly, mocking me with patterns of words my brain can only hope to digest. You see, these tomes remain mostly unread.
I love books. More specifically, I enjoy purchasing them. A late bloomer, I only started building my personal library as a junior in college. While I did own books as early as grade school, they were in paperback form and thus do not count. The selection I would build, as I engineered in my mind, would consist solely of hardcovers, with pristine dustjackets or titles embossed onto leather in some patrician Old English font. I don’t know exactly when or how I became such a book snob, but I believe it has something to do with my overall shopping philosophy: Why buy a derivative when you can get the real thing? A softcover book is Zara and a first edition is Raf Simons.
Byzantine book-buying
I recently realized that the method to my book-buying madness had become even more Byzantine. Going against the popular adage, I judge a book by its cover — always. If the art was tacky or the font was cheesy, it was a no-go. If it’s going on my shelf, the outside has to be as design-led and aesthetically pleasing as the inside is delightful. Plus points if the author is cute and has been given acreage in any of the fashion publications I regularly devour.
I, too, have made a conscious effort to avoid carefully calibrated bestseller lists. I dislike anything “It” and literary blockbusters — titles with Oprah’s Book Club stickers, for instance are “It,” so I keep my distance. I began collecting with the help of Amazon years ago, but my inner student soon developed a strong bias towards seasonless non-fiction. History — European, and penned by Simon Schama if possible — tops the list. Biographies come in next; somehow I’ve amassed quite a few volumes on interesting figures, from Henry VIII and Nicholas II to David Bowie and Diana Vreeland. Then it’s sociology, mostly about tribes and class structures, followed by travel books filled with the exquisite observations of Pico Iyer and Paul Theroux.
Though bulky as they are pricey, art, fashion and architecture titles are musts as well as I am a visual creature. Cookbooks and mixology how-tos, both new and vintage, comprise a growing section. Fiction, on the other hand, is tricky as I cannot be bothered to keep track of myriad characters and convoluted plots. But if it can’t be helped, I prefer to reread the classics — Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March is a sentimental favorite — or contemporary coming-of-age novels along the lines of Sean Wilsey’s Oh The Glory of It All and anything by Bret Easton Ellis.
A daunting daydream
Though seemingly daunting, curating this wall of books has become part of an ongoing fantasy. In an ideal world, I would be lounging on a Suzani rug strewn with throw pillows, diving into Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as Jessie Ware croons unobtrusively in the background. I may or may not be sipping a gin gimlet.
Such daydreaming, however, has taught me the folly of trying to plan my pursuits too carefully. Although the scene tends to begin with a degree of promise, a few chapters stolen here and there, it ends predictably with neglect. Relishing a book, with all its shades of meaning, requires stillness and time, neither of which I have in abundance. (Or I do, but I’d much rather spend my free time taking disco naps or watching Political Animals.) I envy people who drive through piles of books like maniacs. I can hear them now: “If you truly want to incorporate an activity in your life, you will find time for it.”
I know: I should read more. Not blogs or magazines or monographs with big pictures and hardly any text, but honest-to-goodness books. Perhaps the barely touched stack of literature on my bedside table acts as some sort of status update, a way for me to parse my character based on how I choose to nourish my mind — theoretically — at that very moment. At any rate, more than being an intellectual security blanket, the pile represents a set of good intentions. It symbolizes my desire for self-improvement. In that case, I shouldn’t feel too bad. Deep down I know I’ll get to doing it… someday.
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