Milestones
Jul. 10th, 2012 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaToday I hit a milestone, an even bigger one than this weekend, when my number in the library's queue to check out the Downton Abbey DVDs dropped below 100: I got through another pile of Grandpa's books.
Those of you who have been reading me awhile know that my grandpa and I were very close, and that when he died, I inherited his book collection. I've been reading them a bit at a time ever since. Grandpa would have been the last person to want me to push aside my own reading for his, and he'd have been the last person to want me to make myself miserable with his books, so when I'm pretty sure I know I don't want something, I put it aside. James Patterson and I, for example, have parted ways permanently. I have learned all I can about Grandpa and his tastes in books from reading the volumes of James Patterson I have already read, and more would do me harm. But there's other stuff in which we're a lot more congruent, and other stuff in which I look forward to finding out whether we are, or at least finding out what Grandpa saw in it.
So the books are all piled on his desk, here in my office. And...that's not the working desk. The only thing it gets used for other than holding books in the to-read queue is wrapping presents. And yet clearing some more space on it feels like a triumph. I'm not ready to be done reading Grandpa's books--good thing, too, since there are well over a hundred left. I haven't counted. But I am ready to feel like I'm making progress. I'm ready to feel like it isn't infinite. I think today, in particular, I needed something to feel like progress, and hitting another thousand words of book is great for that...up until the point where you've said, "I shouldn't have daily or weekly word count goals, that's not being healthy for me right now." Then, of course, you exceed what you would have set for them, the minute you drop them. Which maybe proves the point about how they weren't healthy? But also makes it hard to use them as the indicator of progress in quite the same way.
I keep reading my way through a book one of my godfathers gave Grandpa called The American Short Story. The The is underlined, and they mean it. They don't mean Some American Short Stories. They mean, by God, these are the most famousest ones that ever famoused. This book is remarkably ill-suited for how I talk about books. It's got The Turn of the Screw in it just kind of at random, sternly, this is something you should read, damn you, go read it, after some Melville but before you get to Hemingway. There are more than a thousand pages of this, and they are being quite firm about what is and is not canon. They know best. It isn't a book to read any more than his bird guide was a book to read (I read that too), any more than the Marine Corps Book of Lists was a book to read (I read that too), it's a thing you have to look up the things you're supposed to have read in, and then read them in bits. No wonder it sat in his chair-side magazine rack forever. I understand now. It's a staggering thing in its way.
Those of you who have been reading me awhile know that my grandpa and I were very close, and that when he died, I inherited his book collection. I've been reading them a bit at a time ever since. Grandpa would have been the last person to want me to push aside my own reading for his, and he'd have been the last person to want me to make myself miserable with his books, so when I'm pretty sure I know I don't want something, I put it aside. James Patterson and I, for example, have parted ways permanently. I have learned all I can about Grandpa and his tastes in books from reading the volumes of James Patterson I have already read, and more would do me harm. But there's other stuff in which we're a lot more congruent, and other stuff in which I look forward to finding out whether we are, or at least finding out what Grandpa saw in it.
So the books are all piled on his desk, here in my office. And...that's not the working desk. The only thing it gets used for other than holding books in the to-read queue is wrapping presents. And yet clearing some more space on it feels like a triumph. I'm not ready to be done reading Grandpa's books--good thing, too, since there are well over a hundred left. I haven't counted. But I am ready to feel like I'm making progress. I'm ready to feel like it isn't infinite. I think today, in particular, I needed something to feel like progress, and hitting another thousand words of book is great for that...up until the point where you've said, "I shouldn't have daily or weekly word count goals, that's not being healthy for me right now." Then, of course, you exceed what you would have set for them, the minute you drop them. Which maybe proves the point about how they weren't healthy? But also makes it hard to use them as the indicator of progress in quite the same way.
I keep reading my way through a book one of my godfathers gave Grandpa called The American Short Story. The The is underlined, and they mean it. They don't mean Some American Short Stories. They mean, by God, these are the most famousest ones that ever famoused. This book is remarkably ill-suited for how I talk about books. It's got The Turn of the Screw in it just kind of at random, sternly, this is something you should read, damn you, go read it, after some Melville but before you get to Hemingway. There are more than a thousand pages of this, and they are being quite firm about what is and is not canon. They know best. It isn't a book to read any more than his bird guide was a book to read (I read that too), any more than the Marine Corps Book of Lists was a book to read (I read that too), it's a thing you have to look up the things you're supposed to have read in, and then read them in bits. No wonder it sat in his chair-side magazine rack forever. I understand now. It's a staggering thing in its way.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 11:48 am (UTC)The other thing is, I have been buying myself an appropriate book for Grandpa's birthday each year. I am buying myself a book I might want to read but that Grandpa might also have wanted to read. This year it was the last volume of the Morris bio of TR. So even when I technically run out of Grandpa books, I won't run out of Grandpa books.
I will cry, though. I'm pretty sure. I mean, I will do it anyway, because books are to be read, and it would be worse to have one lonely volume of James Michener or Louis L'Amour hanging around my to-read pile all lonely-like, pretending I had just happened to be curious. But there are just things after a death, like the first birthday card that's signed "Love, Grandma" instead of "Love, Grandpa & Grandma." And this will be one of them when it comes.
She made him write in cards a lot. She always liked his handwriting. We all did.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 04:27 pm (UTC)My parents never liked the same kinds of books I did. Also, they did not keep books. My entire life they have had just one bookshelf with the Bible, the Science and Health, three or four Chicken Soup for the Soul type of inspirational books and three or four novels which they wanted to loan out. They got very attached to certain authors. Jan Karon, for one, who I find unreadable, and Maeve Binchy.
So I'm glad no one wants me to take their few books. I'd rather have your experience.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 04:40 pm (UTC)My grandpa used to call me on the phone and read out the bits he liked best. I find those scattered through as I'm reading. They're like gifts.
What are also like gifts are the bits I find in new books that I know Grandpa would have liked best, because he did this enough that I knew him well enough to be able to smile quietly to myself and know a Grandpa Bit when I see one.