I love
bookcases almost as much as I love
staircases, from a design
point of view. (I love it even more when they combine.) I love when they are combined as well. I remember lining
up my Babysitter's Club and Boxcar Children and American Girl series
just so in the bookcase in the playroom I shared with my sister. These
books went on the top shelf, where she couldn't reach. I couldn't really
reach them either, unless I stood on the couch.
Later on, we got another bookcase, and lined it
with an encyclopedia set a relative gave us, as well as a series on
different countries of the world, with statistics for each. I loved
browsing those books, and had to stack my young adult novels double, for
lack of room. I wrote a report extolling the benefits of ebooks for a
7th grade class, but inside winced at the thought of giving up paper
novels. I loved the smell of new ones from Barnes and Noble, and was
familiar with the smell of fusty ones that I got from the school
library. You cannot spend much time reading and loving books without
also falling a little bit in love with their shape and feel.
As an ex-pat, however, it made a lot of sense for me to
get a Kindle. It's difficult to find books in English in Taiwan. Plus,
if I continue to travel, putting a Kindle in my purse makes a lot more
sense than mailing boxes of books. Yet that is what my boyfriend is
doing right now. We have a bookcase in our living room, completely
full, filled with books that my boyfriend took with him from home, books
that people who left Taiwan left with him, and books that I bought in a
spending spree at a closing Borders. He thought he might leave the
books here, but then he thought that he wanted our kids to be able to
read the books in the future. One of his favorite memories is of
browsing the bookcases in his grandparents' home.
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| From one level to another. |
I have memories too, of looking at illustrated fairy tale
books, encyclopedias filled with photographs and graphs, and a
particularly good green thesaurus that my mother had. Because of Google,
the internet is very specific. You can search and find exactly what you
are looking for. The internet is also full of links that allow you to
wikiwalk, but try as they might, web designers cannot replicate the
experience of flipping through the pages of a good reference book.
When we went to Costco recently, I thought about how
I wanted that for my children, especially when they are small. While
technology is great, turning physical pages and looking at non-backlit
screens is important for young children. Books are also by definition
curated. A bookcase, by definition, is limited, and a limited choice is
often less stressful. Of course, my boyfriend and I probably will
squirrel away many books on our ebooks and computers, and probably
invest more in books on art and other visual media. My 2nd cousin once
removed told me of how she and her brother encountered Frida Kahlo in
one of her mother's books.
That is why, some time in the future, when my
boyfriend and I have children, we will have real books, and bookcases.
I dream of putting books in ascending order; the picture books on the
bottom where my children can reach them, and books on "serious issues"
on the top shelves where they can reach when they are older. I hope that
they will love toddling over to the bottom rungs to pull out their
favorite story, that one day they will stand on their toes to reach for a
book that interests them, and I hope that they will always strain to
reach ever higher.
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| Staircase of Light |
