Curious George and his Books

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.