Special books: a curated experience
Cicero wrote: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Books connect, teach, entertain and identify: collapsing into a beanbag chair surrounded by pajamaed children thrusting colorful copies of “Frog and Toad,” consulting Julia’s tome while desperately stirring a lumpy sauce for an important dinner party, deciding whether Matisse’s dancers, aerial images of the national parks, or the highlights of Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus buildings would best grace the coffee table, mantle, or powder room. Books link and color our lives.
But in Cicero’s time, a book was nothing like the bound, handy volumes we know. Scrolls of papyrus, awkward to handle and difficult to reference, were the medium of the day. As with the advent of the printing press, today we again see a monumental leap in the written word.
With the myriad media available, we regularly read books on e-readers, tablets, and phones, and listen to them on the go. Technology has magicked books into the ether, and it has made them more accessible to everyone.
So what of paper books: will they disappear? Does how we experience a book change us when there is nothing palpable to hold? Books have page numbers, tables of contents and indexes. We flip back and forth. We see the color, the images, the graphics, the fonts.
We feel the texture of paper, the finish, the gloss, the pulp. It has a smell. A physical book does not merely store information — it is an object of careful design, whose authors and editors deliberately chose how to present and how to share its contents with readers. A physical book is a curated experience.
Enter Diane Lubich and the “Special Books” sale. For 18 years Diane has sorted the books donated to the Friends of the Healdsburg LIbrary with diligence. She has a keen eye for quality. Back when all the books in the sale were priced at $1, she thought that certainly they could ask for just a little more for the more unique donations.
Over the years the collection of special books has grown to occupy the Wine Library during the sales. The books fall into four categories: the current year’s fiction, children’s books, art books and cookbooks.
Diane admits that she is fussy — the books must be in mint condition, with no inscriptions, in gift-giving condition — but she takes full responsibility. All the book are inspected three times before they are boxed, and she wouldn’t put a book in the sale that she wouldn’t buy herself.
She’s grateful that the wonderful people of the Healdsburg community donate these books, but unfortunately in recent years there are not as many people purchasing them.
A book is a pleasure. It may be beautiful, a comfort, a memory, a friend. Not merely an object of use, a book, independent of its contents, can be an object of meaning. For these reasons, books may never entirely reach obsolescence. Remember to visit the special books in the Wine Library during the upcoming sale. You never know what gem of an experience you’ll find as a gift or for yourself.
The Friends of the Healdsburg Library’s book sale takes place Wednesday, August 1 through Saturday, August 4. Wednesday hours are from 1 – 6 p.m. for members only, and memberships available to all at the door, for the annual dues of $5. Thursday and Friday, August 2 and 3, the sale is open to all from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, August 4 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. is bag day at which time books are $6 per bag (please bring your own) and teachers receive a free bag of books. The special books section will be open in the Wine Library from Wednesday through Friday that week.
Irene Hodes is a member of the Friends of the Healdsburg Library
