Over 3000 years ago, the wise
King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 12: 12, “Of making many books there is no
end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh." And that was written
when books had to be laboriously scratched out with a reed or feather quill by
natural light or the dim light of an olive oil lamp. I wonder what King Solomon
would say about all the books and words that overwhelm us nowadays.
I will say more about books but I
will not say anything more at present about study other than that the years of
my formal study after graduation from high school exceeded the number of years
spent in public school.
Anne and I had already talked
about having to make some changes with the bookshelves that are in our master
bedroom/study. There was one particularly tall, full bookshelf that we did not
fancy tipping over on our legs while we slept. After the December 29, 2015
earthquake scare, we decided to take action. That was a big job and when Anne
suggested we do it before she left for Taiwan, both of us knowing that one
person could not move the shelves alone, I tackled the task. Have you ever
tried to move 45 feet worth of books?
That got me thinking. I had never
counted how many books we have, and Anne that thought we should not start now.
However, curiosity (Anne calls me Curious George, after a certain storybook
monkey) got the better of me and I have made a rough estimate. I used a round
number of 12 books per foot, which got me 800 books. Some of you might be
thinking, but you mentioned 45 feet worth of books that you had to move. That
would only give you 45×12 equal 540 books. Yes, but that was only referring to
the books in the study, not the many elsewhere in the apartment such as in the
dining room and on the coffee table there!
To be sure, I have quite a few
books that are not 1 inch thick, so I probably have 1000 books. Then again, two
or three shelves are full of encyclopedic books (yes, including still a copy of
a 1991 version of Encyclopaedia Britannica) that could be 2 inches thick. And,
I have not included a number of hymn books, other songbooks including folk and
popular music, not to mention several dozen large photo albums. Then there are
also a couple of small boxes of books lying around, representing a portion of
the books my father has been trying to pawn off on me as he has been downsizing
in his 90s. Some of them I am just waiting to pass on. I didn't even count
those.
Nor is this by any means all the
books we have ever had. We have gotten rid of quite a few over the years, and
continue to do so. There is no use keeping all the novels one has read, as one
is not likely to re-read them and others others might as well enjoy them. We
have often enjoyed the experience of exchanging or acquiring novels that people
leave at resorts. We even exchanged books with a fellow John Grisham fan on the
one cruise we have taken so far! And, now that I have retired from medicine,
sooner or later, I will be getting rid of about 12 feet worth of medical books,
which, to use my math, equals roughly one hundred and 50 books. I may take them
back to the offices in which I worked for the use of my former colleagues.
Meanwhile, there are still quite
a few books in our shelves that Anne and I have not read. I am hoping to get
more of that done in my retirement and looking forward to it. Obviously, I have
not yet reached King Solomon's point of weariness. Of course, he was talking in
that respect not about reading but about study, which I do a lot less of now.
