It's Getting Easier/Laura Lippman
It's getting easier.
Right now, I have four stacks of books ready to go for the monthly Mystery Box give-away. Truthfully, I wasn't sure at first I could do this for almost a year. If I give away a dozen books every month until February that's -- excuse me, arithmetic break -- 120 books. My assumption was that it would be the converse of skimming the cream. I would find it easy to find books at first because I would be picking books I was inclined to give away anyway. But I believed the deeper I went into my own stacks, the harder it would be to part with volumes, some of which have traveled with me from Evanston, Illinois, to Waco, Texas (one move once there) to San Antonio (one move) to Baltimore (three moves so far). When a copy of, say, Lermentov's A Hero of Our Time has accompanied you for that many miles and that many years, it's hard to let go.
Except, increasingly it isn't. The key, I think, is looking at my shelves through my own eyes, not a visitor's. All my adult life, I've been aware that bookshelves present function as a kind of self-portrait. As an intern at the Atlanta Constitution, listening to the television writer Richard Zoglin detail how critics, given access to Larry Hagman's home, began writing down the names of the books on his shelves. As a feature writer, I once wrote, wryly, about a used bookstore selling "books by the yard" for people who wanted to decorate. I recently saw a photo on social media of a reality television star's home, where the books were color coordinated and suspiciously similar in size. But I can't be too judgmental: I confess that I once bought a gorgeous set of art books and used them, for a time, as a nightstand. (They have, I am happy to say, been repatriated to shelves.)
But I am not my bookshelves. I wish I were. I wish I were as smart and diverse as they imply I am. I wish I had read every book on them. I wish I had loved some difficult ones I couldn't finish. I wish I didn't re-read some schlocky ones obsessively. The more I study my shelves, the more I'm aware of the dissonance between the curated image and the person I am.
Besides, almost no one sees them. For the most part, my personal spaces are off-limits to journalists because my husband and I have embraced a strict work/life divide when it comes to interviews. We talk about each other's work, but we don't talk about our marriage, not really. (We also try not to use our child's name in public and to keep her face out of our social media streams.) If you're seeing my books, you probably already know me.
Popeye says, I yam who I yam. At my age, enamored of change and improvement as I may be, I yam who I yam going to be. There are books I will keep because I aspire to be better, smarter than I am, but I won't hold onto books simply to impress that occasional stranger who visits my office.
Still holding onto A Hero of Our Time, though. For now.
And the rules still apply: the contents of the Mystery Box should remain a secret. If you win one, you can give the books away, tear them apart for art projects, use them to prop open doors. Just don't tell anyone where you got those particular titles.
Laura Lippman
June 2017