Here I stand among my mother’s books, cozy and at home in the bookshelves my father built for her as a housewarming gift for their first house. These books are my childhood, my comfort, my inheritance. They ground me to her – to who she aspired to be, to all she wasn’t, to her values of humility, curiosity & thirst for truths; values that are are now my own.
Sometimes I feel guilty for buying even more books given that it is unlikely I’ll ever get through the two thousand I kept of hers; but then, I tell myself that by pursuing those interests that do not fully overlap with hers, I’m taking her legacy and making it my own. Learning, after all, is an action verb, not a static concept that gathers dust like the dust that lies thick on these untouched shelves.
I wonder who I’d become if I did read all her books. Philosophy, history, medieval women’s rights, the study of WWII and totalitarian Russia, the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Dante & Shakespeare. So much fiction, of all kinds of fiction, good fiction. Would I be as wise and kind as her? Or would I have missed out on life by burying myself beneath mountains of books?
Who will care for these books when I die?
My mother owned a lot of books – somewhere between five and six thousand. She even had doubles of the same book: a battered copy that she had bought second hand in the 60s and 70s, and new versions that she had either purchased for herself or had been given to her as presents. She had three copies of the full Charles Dickens oeuvre. I can’t explain it. Nobody loves Charles Dickens that much!
When it came time for my father to sell the house, I was in charge of triaging Ma’s books. It was an overwhelming task, several weekends of back-breaking work. At first I’d look up each book, educating myself on the author, the topic, and trying to determine whether I might want to eventually read it. But quickly, that became an impossible task, or one that would have required years instead of the short time-frame we had ahead of us. So I went by instinct and cover. I took half with me, Pa kept a few hundred and we gave away the rest to the only English-speaking women’s shelter in the area. It has taken me a full year to catalog the books I claimed of hers. I now realize the treasures I gave away, with regret. Many of the books she has were printed 80 years ago, and there are several that well into their second century of existence. No first editions, so no monetary value, but so many books that are no longer in print, which is a different priceless kind of value.
I doubt I will work through all these books before I die, although I will try. More importantly though, I’m already working on designating homes for all these books – a will of sorts. I do not wish to burden my family, when the day comes to wind up my estate, with the same regrets and doubts I experienced sorting through Ma’s books. Book by book, I will add its home-to-be to my tracker: family members, friends, their children, certain schools, specific libraries and charities that would benefit from this collection – because say what you will of the digitization of the publishing world, there will still be libraries and physical books when I die!
Here are the stats – organized by published title, as opposed to book binding, to capture what is contained in the many anthologies I inherited.
| Ma: Inheritance | Ma: Gift | Purchased New | Purchased Secondhand | Other | Total | |
| Fiction – Adult | 1,328 | 71 | 53 | 14 | 6 | 1,472 |
| Fiction – Youth | 58 | 178 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 248 |
| Non- Fiction | 533 | 32 | 256 | 5 | 16 | 842 |
| Poetry & Plays | 203 | 15 | 4 | 4 | 226 | |
| Total | 2,122 | 296 | 316 | 27 | 27 | 2,788 |
Lots to work through! If you have any special requests, let me know in the comments!
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