LidAmberger

Echte naam

J. Christoph Amberger

Over mijn bibliotheek

When I grew up in Germany, the amount and kind of books lining the shelves in a living room still were a kind of demonstrative barometer of the degree of "Bildung" -- the cultural and literary immersion -- espoused by the owner/inhabitant. Books were like trophy walls... each title a small monument to the reader's intellectual prowess and level of cultured-ness: Books were a flattering reflection of their owner.

Like stuffed deer heads without the glass eyes.

I started accumulating books in my early teens. It appeals to my sense as a hunter and gatherer: The growing lateral expansion of the green-and-gold Karl May novels... the complete youth series of the Tosa Verlarg. Later on the imperialist take-over of shelf-space by the bright orange Penguin Classics. All in the name of a tacit hybrid sentiment of encyclopedic librarianism and placative projection of self.

I've given up on that now. Sure, I have several rather large collections of books. There's a full shelf of Robert E. Howard. Another half shelf of Hanns Heinz Ewers antiquarian titles. And don't forget the 700 volumes on fencing, wrestling, swords, and European combat sports.

But overall, I've settled on the dynamic model of a migrating dune... stacks and piles of books that grow around my night stand, work area, "cave", basement... until they're divvied up into boxes: Those unlikely to be revisited (and, hence, to be recycled into Ukazoo or others), those I may refer back to for research, and those I actually might read again.

I notice the latter are getting fewer.

The concept of representational libraries has been abandoned, however. No bookshelves grace my living room. I feel no need to impress with what I read.

How un-German of me...

Woonplaats

Baltimore, Maryland

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