Last week we reorganized our books. We have over 1,000 books, distributed in bookcases throughout the house. Most of them are in alphabetical order, but we now have a Jane Austen section, a Bronte section, a Conrad section, and a Dickens section.  Most of these books have introductions, but not all have footnotes. (That’s why I often opt for Penguins.)  I used to skip the footnotes, but now enjoy the odd mix of trivia and essential information. I feel affection for the footnote writers who educate us about barouches, carriages, and 19th-century dialect.  

When I was getting used to the city, I bicycled daily to the public library to “rescue” discarded books. The main library was divesting itself of classics and out-of-print 20^th-century books. Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Sir Walter Scott abounded.  I also found D. E. Stevenson’s Mrs. Tim books and the Dutch mystery writer Willem Van de Wetering’s autobiographical books about Zen.

By the way, none of these were rare books.  Most were stained, smudged, dog-eared, you name it.  If they’d ever had value, they had none now.  All I could do was save them from the dumpster.

When you have opted out of the work force, you read more than normal people do. You don’t read all the time – I don’t mean to imply that – but at least three or four hours a day.  The complete works of Horace? Yes.  The complete works of Edith Wharton?  Of course.  Monica Dickens’s One Pair of Hands and E. M. Delafield’s Provincial Lady books? Affirmative.  And there was time for David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, Caroline Gordon’s short stories, and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.

I was living, more or less, in a world of old-ish and ancient literature.  “Has school started?” a man quipped one summer day when I had spread out my notebooks and reference books on a table at a coffeehouse. 

But most people are oblivious of what you’re reading in public. Conducting a business on your laptop?  Boring, at worst.   Reading in a foreign language?  A nutcase, but no one comments on it.  Delving into reference books and taking notes?  Possibly a teacher or lawyer.  And then there are the conversationalists who talk about their intimate lives.  We listen, because the acoustics make it impossible not to.

That’s where I learned that the plans for a summer bluegrass festival had gone awry.  The young woman, the assistant director, had been fired for an “indiscretion,” as she called it.  She Had Had An  Affair with the Married Director.  More than an indiscretion, I thought.  People were fired all the time for less.  One of my friends, a popular teacher at a private school, was fired for giving C’s to students who had rich, influential parents.  But for the grace of gods… fortunately, the better and the best students signed up for my classes, so I didn’t have that dilemma. 

At one time I was a loudmouth like that fired assistant director.  Not only did I talk freely about my opinions of everything under the sun, I often referred to people by first and last names.  “Jane Bowers said…”  as if it were necessary to distinguish her from all the other Janes.

One day I was reading a Russian novel when a “frenemy” rushed over and confronted me because she and I had applied for the same job. “You ruined my chances!” she shrieked.  Wait, what, why… And what business was it of hers? Neither of us got the job. But “I’m glad you didn’t get it,” a friend who worked there said.  “You’re too nice.”  And one of the supervisors told me privately, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease, Kat.” 

All I can say is, it is a good thing I am bookish.  Books have gotten me through every crisis in my life.  After a hospitalization, I binge-read Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles and Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool.  I took notes on what people read on the bus.  Mostly it was the newspapers, but there were also The Cat Who... mysteries, the latest Oprah book, and a book about Andy Warhol.

A friend who died in her early 40s asked me:  Do you think it’s enough to have been a reader in life? 

Yes, I do.  I adamantly do.  No one at her memorial service mentioned her love of books, and come to think of it, I have never heard anyone at a memorial service mention the love of reading.

But, believe me, she was bookish, and if she had lived, I would have found out about twice as many books.

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