By Kelly Keene

What is the value of books?

Last week, it took me three clicks to order Madam online, and have it delivered to my doorstep so that I could read it in time for book club. It cost $16.95 before taxes and after shipping and handling over $18. That’s a lot of money. Granted, I had to buy the hardcover because it’s a new book that the library hasn’t even ordered yet, but the price felt reasonable. I do not mind spending over $18 on a book. I cringe when a meal out, or even a single cocktail cost that much. But for a book? I’d be willing to spend much more. I know that my literary spending threshold might not be the norm. I read about four books a month, and at $18 bucks a pop, I’m sure Dave Ramesey might not agree with my spending. 

Books also take up a lot of physical space around me. If I ordered a hard copy of every book I read, I’d probably lose space to walk comfortably through my house. The amount of books that stack on tables, and fill the corners of my small living space, would probably make Marie Kondo break a sweat. 

Luckily, I don’t spend over $18 every time I read. I don’t always buy hard copies either. I use Libby and Hoopla and the complementary library services to subsidize my consumption. Audiobooks, and e-books supplement my addiction. Not all valuable things cost money. 

I treasure my books. They are the first set of boxes I move into any new house, and the first thing I look for when I enter somebody else’s home. I love a tangible book, and I love the fluid accessibility of an audio book too. Any book, bring it hither! But it does make me sad to have read and loved with no token of remembrance nestled and preserved between my shelves. 

Although I cherish my books, I don’t always need to keep them so close. Sharing, begging, borrowing and stealing books is not a crime. A book’s value increases when it falls into the hands of a new owner. If books were an aged wine, their flavor would not grow by how many years they sat, untouched on a dusty rack, hidden away in a dark cavernous space. The richness of a book blossoms after every new reader has tried a sip. When you get to taste a book that a reading sommelier has recommended, you step into a story, and a community who knows that world. The world is more real and vibrant during your visit, because others have validated it, and been there too.

If I was a librarian, I would heavily curate the bookshelves. Not only so I can hoard more texts at my own house, taking home spare copies that nobody had checked out in years, but mainly so that the readers who wandered in to browse, could really see the books that are there, and value them even more. Getting rid of older books helps us appreciate the ones we keep. Does a rose, freshly pruned, not smell extra sweet? Don’t we love the clothes we keep just a little more after a trip to the goodwill donation center? How often do we run our fingers through our own hair in the days just after a fresh cut?

In high school, I ate lunch in the library and snuck in food. I used the stacks of overgrown shelves to hide my delinquency, but I never really browsed them and explored. No precious tome ever jumped out at me between bites of my peanut butter sandwiches. No reimagined prose pulled at my sleeve and begged me to take a peek. No verses lept out and shouted their raw emotion into my agsty teenage ear. No. The books on the shelves were boring and stagnant. No librariarian ever recommended a new genre, or encouraged my peers to post about their latest great read. We did not have display tables that highlighted new authors, or even a section of “staff picks” to show us that adults liked reading too. I would enter this temple and see only the available chairs and computers on which to print. I’d use the library, but not the books, I’d see the forest and miss the trees.

One day, a new shelf of books did show up though. They were right by the door, on the outside of the turnstile. After passing through that big scary machine that could tell if you stole the books they were giving away, just to the right, before the big double doors, the new shelf came with a sign that said, “Discontinued books, take them home, and don’t bring them back.”

They were the rejects. The super-dusty musties with yellowing pages and multiple indications that they had been “property of” a couple different places before landing on that shelf. And they were also FREE. I could possess them, adopt them, and make them my own. After that shelf went up, I would commit to a lifetime of back problems just to carry as many of them home as I could. I’d pack my backpack to the brim. The zipper would protest and split, but still, I took more. Some of them weren’t even ones a fourteen year old should ever care about. One about the history of zoning laws for a particular district in Los Angeles comes to mind. But they became mine. My first library. My first arsenal of books I could arrange in my corner of the house and say, “See here. This is what I read. This is what I’m thinking about. This is what has shaped my past, or might just influence my future.” I never bought posters to decorate my room, or glow in the dark stickers to paste up on the ceiling. When I was hopeful, I looked at the books, and the little spaces between them, and dreamed about what I could find on the free shelf the next day, and the next. 

So I beat on, books against my back, scavenging seamlessly into new words.