On Books and Guilt

Friends, please welcome Sarah Lancaster, an active and insightful member of our group who wrote such wonderful things about books that I pestered her to share them with all of us and she graciously accepted. :)

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I love having guests in my home. It’s not my husband’s favorite thing, but we have found a pretty good social balance after two and a half decades of marriage.

However.

There is this thing that happens when a new friend comes over to my home for the first time. It comes after the effusion of greetings at the door, the removal of their shoes, and the offer to show them around a little. I’m pointing out my mom’s quilted wall hanging, but they are clearly not listening.

They glance politely at the fabric scene, but their eyes are dragged irresistibly backwards. To my bookshelves. Then it comes.

“Wow, have you read ALL those books?”

That question used to make me squirm. I used to scan the internet uncomfortably, checking out the newest plans every January for reading my own shelves this year. I used to make fervent New Year’s Resolutions not to buy any books until I had read X number of books off my own shelf.

Books were a pleasure, but a guilty pleasure. Because if you owned a bunch of books you didn’t read, didn’t that mean you were a hoarder? A poser?

Now, though, I can laugh at the question. “Hmm? Oh, of course I haven’t!”

Here’s the thing, friends: my books aren’t some kind obligation, a barometer for my own intelligence, or an obligation to be filled. I don’t have anything to prove.

The idea that you can only buy books if you plan to sit down and read them immediately is a utilitarian thought—an assumption that books exist to be used to advance your knowledge, and if you aren’t using each and every book then you aren’t maximizing your return on investment.

Homeschooling my kids for the last 15 years has plunged me into the Charlotte Mason and Christian Classical world, and the way I see pretty much everything has changed. Even books.

I adore my books. I’m not obliged to “use” them effectively. I don’t need them to work for me. They are friends. I like to wander my shelves, running my fingers over old favorites, remembering what it felt like the last time I read them, and making the promise of "someday" to the ones I haven't read.

Don’t get me wrong, I don't have space to waste on books I don't ever want to read, but I also have no intention of reading all my books, nor do I feel guilty for buying books when other books are unread on my shelves. Unread is a whispered promise, not a source of shame.

I am creating a library. It's supposed to be broad, expansive, inviting and exciting, with mysteries tucked in for the interested person to discover someday. That might be me or my kiddos, or maybe it will be a neighbor or homeschool friend. I do a fair bit of recommending to families I know and a little bit of lending to certain trustworthy people. I'm also starting to tuck away some excellent middle grade books for my one-day-in-the-future grandchildren. It’s so hard to have a bookworm that age and to supply their voracious appetite when you don't know what's popular and there is a mountain of trash at the public library. (Go and check out Gary D. Schmidt, if you have a middle-school or older kiddo. Honestly, go read him just for yourself. You’ll thank me later.)

To me, a library is a source of possibility—it’s The Wood Between the Worlds in The Magician's Nephew. With thousands of books comes thousands of doorways to new worlds of thought. I try to curate possibilities that are beautiful, interesting, good, deep, powerful, truthful, funny, restful, and challenging, and I don’t worry about who exactly is going to accept each invitation. Books are a doorway and a library is nothing less than a miracle.