“The library protects us from external enemies, filters the noise of the world, tempers the cold winds around us – but also gives us the feeling of being all-powerful. For the library makes our puny human capabilities fade into insignificance: it concentrates time and space. It contains on its shelves all the strata of the past. The centuries that have gone before us are there. The past haunts libraries, not only in documents bearing witness to past ages, but through scholarly works, literary reconstructions and images of all kinds.” – p. 98
The fourth Book of Christmas is Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet (translated by Sian Reynolds).
This book was written exclusively for people who buy too many books. Not people who use their library a lot or people who like to download books on their Kindle. Bonnet has written a lovely little book that appeals to the reader who cannot pass an open bookshop without popping in and buying at least three volumes.
As someone who has this problem, I enjoyed every page of Bonnet’s book. It’s like going to therapy and having your therapist tell you, “You’re not crazy – just passionate!”
Bonnet discussed the blessings and burdens of having thousands of books in your personal library. The pages he spent laboring over how to organize his books validated all of the times I have sorted, weeded, and re-sorted my library. It was almost like Bonnet was saying, “Candice, I understand that you buy an insane amount of books. It’s ok. I’ll show you how to organize them and justify keeping all of them.”
On a more serious note, Bonnet’s chapter seven, “Real People, Fictional Characters” was particularly insightful. He spoke at length about the fact that we are better acquainted with fictional characters than we are with their authors.
This is something I never really thought about, but it’s true. Hamlet is more real to me than Shakespeare himself. I know more about Anne Shirley than I will ever know about L. M. Montgomery. No matter how many books are written about Jane Austen, she remains more of a mystery than Anne Elliot or Elizabeth Bennet.
If you, like me, buy too many books, I guarantee that you will appreciate the words of Jacques Bonnet.