On Book Hunting

“What an astonishing thing a book is. [One] glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.” — Carl Sagan

We all love books; that is why we are here. We know exactly what Carl Sagan is talking about. Not only can we have conversations with those long dead, but there are elements of the book itself that entice us, too. The unique cover art. The interesting title, like a jigsaw puzzle piece. The smell of a freshly printed book. The Egyptian dust of an aged book’s pages. The challenge of a very long novel. The small savor of a novella. With books we take trips through and by words, at little cost in comparison to what it brings. Finally, there is the sense of accomplishment when we place the book upon our shelves and the subsequent nostalgia when glancing at its spine from afar. Books make us smile as dumbly as a shy date.

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My book shelves. (Photo by George Salis)[/caption]

Recently, I’ve been going on book hunting trips with my girlfriend. It all started when a friend of mine recommended I visit a thrift store called Our Father’s Closet. He told me he had found a beautiful copy of *Wuthering Heights there and that I should take a look at the many other novels they have. Acting on his suggestion, I later went with my girlfriend and found a range of books (Ratner’s Star by Don DeLillo, Jazz and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Laughing Monsters *by Dennis Johnson, etc.) both hard and soft covers, vintage and lightly used or practically brand new, and all for under five dollars.

This eventually led to us visiting other thrift stores in our town of DeLand, Florida, which included Goodwill. We didn’t stop there. We cleaned out DeLand, and spread to different towns, using our smart phones to find other places. We discovered that our local libraries sold books, too, some of them immaculate, without any library markings. Most recently, from the Port Orange Library, I found The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (a nearly 800-pager, retail priced at $27.50), all hard cover, all mint condition, for under five dollars. We also checked independent bookstores, which aren’t as cheap but still have good deals and occasional sales. I eventually found myself swimming in books the way Scrooge McDuck swims in wads of bills and piles of gold coins.

My method of finding specific books, though, might be different than those who read based on a compelling plot. I have a long index stored in my head of authors and notable titles that a serious writer and reader should be familiar with, based on suggestions I hear about: favorite authors of my favorite authors, referenced books in books I read, etc. I scan the shelves and snatch anything familiar.

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Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra. Detail of the Twelve Labours Roman mosaic from Llíria (Valencia, Spain). (Photo by Luis García)[/caption]

My bookshelf is now like the Hydra whose necks Hercules hacked at: for every one book I read, two or more take its place. I have two full bookshelves now. One is filled with the books I’ve read, which are placed vertically, and one is stacked with books I have yet to read, which are, after reading, ritualistically turned from horizontal to vertical.

As someone who is working on his first novel, and who is deadly serious about becoming a novelist, I read anything and everything within the category of literary fiction (usually twentieth century literature). I love a challenge, and so I read the heavy hitters, like some of those authors mentioned above. Of course, one cannot just read the difficult literature; one must also read the simplistically great, such as Ray Bradbury, and other classic writers. I also don’t limit myself to fiction; I read all kinds of nonfiction, from science books to memoirs.

I read for a number of reasons: a) I love it, b) as Gabriel García Márquez noted, a writer must have some conception of the literature that has come before him or her, c) it allows me to know what is possible as far as structure or technique is considered, and it can show me what works in fiction and what does not, and d) it provides fodder for ideas and inspiration in my own writing. All this comes from a combination of paper and wood and ink. For all of a book’s magic, I am made to smile.