Who Cares About Selfies?: My Shelfies At Home

I've been hoarding books since I can remember. They’re everywhere. I've shelves that will no longer hold books. It won't be long to start having stacks in the bedroom, in the living room, in the spare bedroom, in the dining room. If my wife has a saying in the matter, I'll never have books in the bathroom or in a couple of closets...

My wife would never give me an ultimatum like “You need to organize, get a plan, or get rid of all these books!” She knows me pretty well...

I’ve started building my own library at the tender age of 10 years old. And it was built with intent. First I started with my first love. SF. It was planned to the tiniest detail, and according to a modus operandi.

I’ve never been much of an organizer myself, but when it comes to books I’ll always draw the line. Books inhabit a different plane of existence. I love the idea of being more intentional, more organized.  

My books have become treasured like vinyl records. Looking at Alfred Stieglitz's photographs on a computer is not as good as seeing his work on a page. It's about sequence and control. And remembering. Clippings, dates and extracts all add up.

I've been going to bookshops since I was 10 years old. Some of my first memories have a bookshop in them. I was born near the oldest bookshop in the world, Bertrand (here as well). They used to have a very large foreign section (several bookshelves), but no more. This foreign section was relegated to the back a long time ago...My first English books were bought there. Once in a while I still go there just to feel the scent of physical books, the paper, the ink, the glue...Book sniffing is still a major kick for me (now I only do it at home…lol). I just love to crack open a book and catch a whiff of the pages. When I go to the Bertrand Bookshop, the first thing I notice is the smell which is like no other bookshop I know, and I know a lot of them. I don't know. There's something about books stacked everywhere that gets to me every time. Whenever I go over there, I immediately feel a sense of nostalgia. It's good for the soul...Anyway, as the years have passed, I find that I'm biased in favour of yellowed paperbacks. They just smell wonderful! Friends tend to give me new hardcover books on birthdays, whereas I would rather have a humble paperback. They're easier to prop open, they're smaller and lighter. Also, they smell so much nicer...These are my memories of browsing books at Bertrand back in the day...

By the last count, I own around 5000 physical books (and counting). Why physical books? I read print books because I already own thousands and cannot resist browsing in a used bookstore (in the old Lisbon we can find them on every corner). If by fate I’d suddenly lose my personal library I’d feel diminished, and older, for it. In fact I am my books!

As a professional reader, I get lots of books for free (print and e-books versions). It goes with the “job”, but my personal physical library, i.e., my print books are treasured in a way that my electronic books aren’t. And that’s why I’d never consider giving up my print books. My inner dragon refuses point-blank, and he has fangs a mile long, claws, and fiery breath backing him up. My “classics” are there for the taking. That’s means me, whenever I feel like it. Those will stay on my shelves, “my precious” shelves, for as long as I have shelves to put them on. I’ve some signed copies that I treasure like no other physical asset. In this day and age, having lots of print books at home may not be a popular choice of home decoration enhancement, but that’s not the point. My physical book library is there because it makes me happy, and it’s all about aesthetics as well. Looking at my library gets me in Zen mode…

Every time I visit a friend's house for the first time, the first thing I check out is the household’s bookshelves... If they don't have anything worth reading, I'm left with just the medicine cabinet...In terms of the old dual problem print books vs. electronic ones, I'll never give away the paperback which I got as a present for some of my birthdays. I will not. Sometimes it's the emotional tie that binds me to the physical book that matters, and not what's on the pages. I surely love my used and abused paperbacks of Heinlein, Phil Dick, LeGuin, Shakespeare, Pessoa, etc.

Without further ado, some of my shelfies in no particular order:

SF = Speculative Fiction.

NB: Thanks to ThemisAthena for having started this thread in June. I only got around to it now…

Life-is-Shakespeare: "William Shakespeare - A Textual Companion" by Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor

"[] All Texts of Shakespeare are editions; all have been edited; all have been mediated by agents other than the author. This complicating limitation applies as much to the earliest extant editions as to the most recent. We can only read Shakeaspeare's discourse through the filter of earlier readers, who have "translated", i.e., handed over, transmitted, transmuted his texts to us. To translate is, notorisously, to betray; to communicate is to corrupt. Shakespeare's texts have thus inevitably been betrayed by the very process of their transmission even before they are betrayed []."

(from the "General Introduction" to this volume)

It's arrived. The wait is ov'r:

"I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,

Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well."

(Sonnet 58: "That God Forbid, That Made Me First Your Slave")

In "The Tempest", and according to Antonio, the island is ten leagues beyond man's life. That's how I feel when I came across a book like the one I'm holding in my hands, thanks to ThemisAthena, who pointed it out to me in the first place. 

Also in "The Tempest", we learn that "All tormet, trouble, wonder, and amazement Inhabits heere."

This uncharted island (read "volume") is not only uncharted, it is one on which anything can happen...As I soon as I started persusing it at leisure (not really "reading" it yet...), the concept of Sources in Shakeapeare resurfaced in my mind.

Hunting for sources is game much to my liking. Who invented the perfect method for murder? Pouring hebenon in the ear - killing without traces. Francesco Maria della Rovere was poisoned, and it is said by this method. Perhaps Shakespeare was aware of Eustachios anatomical study from 1564? Or was he influenced by Marlowe? Remember the "Neapolitan Method"  (Edward III.) - pouring powder in the ear of an enemy.  

One of the books I haven't read yet is "Hamlet in Purgatory" by Stephen Greenblatt. I own a german version of it, and started reading it a long time ago, but stopped somewhere. It is a complex problem with the religious motives in Shakespeare. I want to read Greenblatt's book together with Jacques Le Goffs "Die Geburt des Fegefeuers." It is about the historical development of the theological concept of the purgatory, starting with Clemens von Alexandria and Origenes. Purgatory is a very important concept for the history of theological thinking. I guess one cannot overestimate its relevance when reading Shakespeare's texts.

I've always felt I'm missing half the fun of Shakespeare if I ignore the malleability of his word sources. Why? Words can have figurative meanings as well as literal meanings, and no one was more conscious of this than William Shakespeare.  He used them every which way, if I can put it like that. Take for instance his last sonnet in his famous sequence of sonnets:  "The little love god, lying once asleep, / Laid by side his side his heart-inflaming brand."   Perhaps the most common meaning of the last word there, 'brand', at the time was 'torch,' but you can probably tell from the context that Shakespeare wanted the reader to be thinking of other things as well (read the rest of the sonnet if the context is not clear). 

One of the chief ways Shakespeare conveyed meaning and power in his verse was by using words in multiple ways, making suggestions, hints, innuendos--along (often) with sounds he wanted resonating there in the Globe theater.

As for the literal meaning of some of the words in the plays, the two best sources are (1) the plays themselves (i.e., how a given word is used in other plays) and (2) the OED, or Oxford English Dictionary, which provides an historical record of the meanings of words. In other words, do not always assume that one definition you might find, written by one modern editor, is the 'definitive' definition, if I can put it that way.  Words are tricky things, their meanings shifting and shifting. Shakespeare loved playing with these words and their shifting meanings.  

On the word 'shaft', you might take a look around at how Shakespeare used it elsewhere, even elsewhere in Romeo and Juliet.  The man's name, after all, was Shake-speare (the name appears hyphenated on many of the early plays).  Think not that he was unaware of his name and its various meanings and sounds (his name was spelled a dozen or more ways at the time, even by himself).   (A common meaning of the word "shaft" at the time was "spear," I guess I should make it clear.)

The first reference in R&J that I see to "shaft" comes out of the mouth of Romeo, when he and Mercutio are (as usual) bantering about love:  "I am too sore enpierced with his shaft," he says, once again referring to that god Cupid" (Act I, Scene 4).  

Anyway. Is Shakespeare not the (spiritual) father of Sherlock Holmes?

Well, enough with writing this post. Down the Rabbit Hole, awesomeness abound!

With investigative Greetings,

Musings/Träumereien/Devaneios

NB: Thanks again to ThemisAthena for pointing out this wonderful addition to my Shakespeare cannon.