catapult magazine

Bookshelf porn

by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

With a burgeoning book collection and shelves in short(ish) supply, my husband Rob and I spend a good amount of time brainstorming about the wall o’ shelves that we’d like to build.  Moving all of our books around four states over the past 13 years — that was a burden of owning so many, but dreaming about fun places to put them is actually one of the joys, one of the many ripple effects of a lovely, creative form.  I like the ones that have sentimental value, I like the ones that I return to again and again because they’ve shaped me so significantly, I like the antique four that sit atop the shelf next to my desk, rescued from a rummage sale simply because of the colors of their covers and titles: The Egg and I and Birdcraft and Women and God and The World We Want to Live In.

The world I want to live in has lots of books in it, and yet, having purchased a vacant school building a couple of years ago with loads of abandoned textbooks in it, I’m also aware of how books contribute to the glut of stuff in our world today.  What do you do with a series of huge, garish science volumes that are five years out of date?  You cross your fingers and hope to find a place that will accept the donation without charging you for shipping and has more ideas about what impoverished children would do with old textbooks than you do.  If the goal is to provide access to knowledge, perhaps a global effort to distribute solar-powered, satellite-connected e-readers would be more fruitful.

And yet, there must be something that opening an actual book confers beyond the facts within.  In 2010, a study caught my eye.  Apparently, the number of books a children’s parents own is a substantial predictor of a child’s academic achievement — more so than the parents’ job or education level.  Here are some more details from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The study was conducted over 20 years, in 27 countries, and surveyed more than 70,000 people. Researchers found that children who grew up in a home with more than 500 books spent 3 years longer in school than children whose parents had only a few books. Also, a child whose parents have lots of books is nearly 20-percent more likely to finish college….  Even a relatively small number of books can make a difference: A child whose family has 25 books will, on average, complete two more years of school than a child whose family is sadly book-less.

Globally, these statistics are just another line of demarcation between the rich and the poor, because I can’t imagine that a substantial portion of a dollar-a-day goes to buying books or that unspoiled books are a free find in many of the areas the poor are confined to in the developing world.  However, in my North American community, even a poor family has access to the free box at the bookstore across the street and ten-cent paperbacks at summer garage sales.  What matters here more than money is curiosity and wonder, but even these resources can be in short supply.  And when they are, not even a free box of books looks like the treasure chest that it is.

So maybe it’s not enough just to keep the library doors open — maybe we also need to make our libraries beautiful places where all kinds of people actually want to spend time.  And maybe more than just teaching kids how to comprehend the words, we need to teach them to imagine and write their own stories.  And perhaps beyond distributing free and cheap books, we need to learn how to build shelves — a shelf for every living room! — because having space for things can prompt us to consider what objects of value we’d like to fill that space with, like a line drawing that begs for color.

In that spirit, here’s a link to the latest bookshelf porn  (don’t worry — unless you’re a character trapped in Fahrenheit 451, it’s safe for work).  And as you lust, think: what other kinds of containers can we create for creativity in our homes and schools and neighborhoods?  What other kinds of holy discontent can we spark by delineating a love-shaped void, longing to be filled with good things?