What I Learn from Years of Reading and Collecting Books and Letting Some of Them Go
These past few days, I "KonMari" my room and decided to rearrange my bookshelves. While sorting out all of my belongings, I discovered a box filled with books I manically collected during my college years sitting underneath my bed. After opening it, the books seem to be staring at me while I stare back at them like we are having a confrontation of sorts. For a moment, it made me reflect on my life as a reader and book collector, and this sense of nostalgia hit me.
After snapping out of this nostalgic state, the fact remains that my shelf space and room space are precious and limited, and I only want to fill my life with things that “spark joy” within me. I need to decide which books would stay and which would eventually go to the bin. So in honor of literature month and the books I am about to throw away, I would like to write some piece to honor my journey as a reader and book collector.
Starting Years as a Reader and Book Collector
My fascination with books started early in my childhood. I remember holding my small hardbound fairytale books, a book set with stories like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Three Little Pigs. But it was the illustrations at first that engrossed me. It's like my eyes can't get enough of the colors and drawings. I look at them again and again, committing them in my memory. Then there was my childhood best friend Grimm's book of fairytales. The book was enormous and heavy. It contained more words and the occasional one to two pages of illustrations, like the naked butt of the king in The Emperor's New Clothes, the candy house of the witch in Hansel, and Gretel other beautiful illustrations inside that book.
However, it is in my teenage years that I started to enjoy reading literature, and book reports ignite my interest in book collecting. Books like Ella Enchanted, The Little Prince, and Thieves of Ostia were carried inside our classroom boxes after boxes. A sheer excitement overcame me, forgetting the fear I felt days before asking for extra money to buy something outside the average family expenses, even if it is for school requirements.
I did not grow up in an environment that encourages me to read books outside the typical academic obligations. It is usual for Southeast Asian households to be thrifty, so buying books for leisure is a luxury. Moreover, since it does not involve cleaning and moving around the house, reading for my parents is a lazy activity. Not to mention what damage it can do to your eyesight, they would add. However, I continued to read in secret and went against the general expectations.
I have read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince while holding a flashlight while everyone in the house is sleeping at night so no one could scold me. I read with my friends at school. We exchanged novels, particularly stories about young adults. I bought my first novel, L. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, in a book fair inside my school using my savings. And even after my childhood best friend, who was four years older than me, went away to college, I marched to their house and borrowed books from her mother like Louisa Alcott's Little Women.
Reading helped me to cope with my deep-seated feeling of isolation and loneliness because of being an adopted child. I found out pieces of the truth through indirect hints and silent whispers between adults and childish banter between cousins. So I was left alone on my own devices to understand and stitch the truth. But in reading, I started to find solace and identity with the people I meet in stories. Books became for me houses I visit to explore and get to know the people living inside. And sometimes, I leave too early out of boredom or just out of an inability to comprehend the house. But sometimes, even after the visit, a piece of my heart stayed inside those pages. When I read, I have companions, and when I buy a book, I have something of my own.
Moreover, in books, I found girls like me, like Anne in Anne of Green Gables or Mary in The Secret Garden. Orphaned and neglected at a very young age and adopted, they were able to find acceptance and love. In those stories, they eventually mattered and belonged to the people around them. And in my heart, I wanted the same assurance these characters have that I am going to be OK despite my "oddness."
Not encouraged to read, buy books for my leisure, and being an adopted child in her young adolescent years made me want to form a personal path of rebellion. I decided to be a bookworm and persist in reading and building my book collection even if I am discouraged! Talk about being brave and revolutionary. Though I developed a deep affection for reading and books by this time, this "rebellious" way serves another personal purpose, and that is instead of being single out because ofbeing an adopted child, I can be single out because of my "bookish-ness." This identity gave me a powerful feeling of being significantly different from the crowd. I am somehow special but without the burden and constantly feeling the need to fight the pity of the people around me.
When I went to college, I develop an unhealthy impulse of excessively buying booksbut not reading them. There is a Japanese term for this impulsive behavior called "tsundoku." My obsession with buying books can be attributed to two main culprits. First, I started to attend and participate actively in church, and second, the store Book Sale.
In our church, we have a statement I wrote in the tablet of my heart with great faithfulness and love. It goes this way "Great leaders read books," which is a remarkable statement unless someone went overboard with trying to read books by purchasing them. This someone is, of course, is me. Ooops.
On multiple days within a week, I would visit and sit on the SM Baguio's Book Salefloor, hunting and obsessing over books. I would gladly move stacks upon stacks of books desperately looking for a purchase treasure. And most of us know, books are sold at Book Sale at a meager price. It became a standard for me to go home to my boarding house with three to five books. And oh boy, the stacks of books in my room just grew and grew. By the end of my seven years in college, the heaviest of my baggage is the one enormous box where I managed to fit all the books I have acquired.
Even though my college years were a time of my compulsive and unhealthy behaviors in reading and book buying, these were also the years I familiarized myself with what types of storytelling I would enjoy and who are my favorite authors. Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami cast their spell on me, and I would read again and again stories like The Little Prince, Memoirs of A Geisha, and The Last Time I Saw Mother.
But what I am most thankful for reading around this time is the opportunity it gave me to connect to other people through knowledge sharing. When I read an excellent book that gave me a lot of insight, there is an internal urge to pass it to someone else or talk about it with a friend. So I either talk about it or give the book. Giving that well-written book will sting a bit. Still, the disappointment of not having someone to undergo the experience of reading it is more painful than letting it go because I've discovered that there are types of books that cannot stay only in one pair of hands but have to travel to the next pair to be held and read. Some stories and books are personal to me, and they will stay on my shelves as long as they can, but there is another type of book that the knowledge they contain needs to be passed on and shared.
Buying books using the allowance from your parents are far easier than using your own hard-earned money. Being a young professional and just started to manage my finances made the reality of my unhealthy addiction hit hard. I can not longer afford to go to book shops without thoroughly thinking if the book I am picking is something I should buy. "Adulting" has forced maturity in me.
Putting some healthy breaks on my general attitude towards reading and book collecting is just one part of the exciting times ahead of me as a bibliophile. Going back to my hometown and having more personal freedom have opened the doors to uncharted territories. As a reader and book collector, I've been officially and finally introduced to book fairs and Philippine Literature.
When I talk about book fairs that I participate in this time, these are the mega fairs that involve many publishing houses. Book fairs with book launching, book signing, live-reading, and writers' meet and greet events. The Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) and Big Bad Wolf are an example of these fairs. The experience was exhilarating and magical, and I would like to think that every reader and book collector would agree that book fairs are sort of heaven or nirvana on earth.
But so far, the greatest book fair I get to experience must also be the most challenging endeavor I undertook professionally, the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019. Imanaged to be a part of the team that organized the delegation that represented the Philippines in the largest international book fair. FBF is annually held during October in Frankfurt, Germany, with participants worldwide and boost to be the most extensive platform for digital and printed content. So even though I did not personally go to Frankfurt, being part of this massive event as a production assistant and being part of the early planning stages to post-prod was a dream come true. Seeing over 500 books published by the leading publishing houses in the country and written by Filipino authors showcased in the entire world in a beautifully designed stand made me very happy and proud.
Working in a government agency that primarily serves the Philippine publishing industry also gave me a closer look into the local literature. Unfortunately, I did not grow up reading books written by Filipino writers. Aside from the usual piece of local literature my Filipino textbooks in high school and college courses offered, Philippine literature did not become part of my early reading and book collection. But my ignorance of Filipino authors and literature ended when I worked at NBDB and when a friend lent me Philippine literature books. As I started to read the literary works of Eliza Victoria, Nick Joaquin, Luis Joaquin M. Katigbak, and other amazing Filipino authors, I felt both shame and relief. I finally got to experience my national consciousness and Filipino identity through literature by Filipino authors for Filipinos.
But my bad habits in college still are present and had managed to erode my psyche. Surrounded by so many book-related things, I got back to the same dangerous pattern. I acquired more books but have no diligence and genuine interest in reading. In the process, I become a hoarder like the Businessman from The Little Prince, who cannot stop owning and counting every star he sees in the sky but never understood its value. After all, what is a book without its reader?
And as a result, something bad happened. The words in the pages started to leave me, I slowly lost the ability to build worlds in my head, and my insatiable thirst for knowledge had dwindled. Then one day, I lost all of my interest in books. For one and a half years, I would not touch any books on my bookshelves and stop actively reading and looking for books to buy. I had enough.
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Going back to the present time and Marie Kondo, she mentioned in her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (and yes, I have the book), that the KonMari method encourages only to keep around thirty books. Thirty books seem to be awfully few, and how can a person who loves reading and collecting books find the courage to let go.
But as the book explained, you need to ask oneself the fundamental question of the KonMari method, "does this spark joy?". Does this book spark joy? Have I read this, and if I happened to have, does it aroused my intellect? And I have asked these hard questions to every book in my belongings.
It is almost four years after my time at the university. I am currently in a work-from-home setup which is a very fortunate situation while in the middle of a
global pandemic. And yes, I am about to throw books, a lot of them, which you might think is a waste, but deep down, I know I will never reread these, nor will I ever start to read them again.
Honestly, I cannot remember the exact day I pick up a book on my shelf and read again, nor the reason behind it. But having the courage to declutter and purge my book collection, I realized a few months ago that I started again to read and purchase books, but this time there is an effort to be mindful with every reading and purchase made. This subtle change in behavior gave my reading and collecting a better sense of purpose and direction.
My life is composed of limited time, meaning I can only read books that much. But I've been in a relationship with books for many years now. Collecting books became a form of personal art, and reading stories helped me become a better person. It healed me, became a catalyst to learn a couple of life lessons, and taught me to give. And I do not see myself stopping at any point in my life. So might as well keep and read books that only truly capture my spirit, challenges me, and, if I was lucky, changes me. Because that is the thing about it, books are powerful.
