My old library! So many happy hours turning pages in this spot… they’re all in cardboard right now, but one day I’ll see these books again.
I can’t say that I am especially given to collecting things, but books are definitely the exception. A home library with built-in bookshelves – white ones, or maybe blue – extending from floor to ceiling, with brass goose-necked lamps and a rolling ladder, and a couch or maybe a recliner with a table for my teacup: that’s the dream. And of course it needs to include books. Plenty of them, in beautiful editions, with all of my favorite authors represented.
There are a few pangs that are uniquely known to book collectors. The series books that are slightly different heights: why? Or a series design that inexplicably changes midway through – with a new look for the spine, or just one book dust-jacketed while all the rest are not. Again, why? Or, possibly the worst, the publisher that starts re-printing a favorite classic author or series and then stops without finishing the collection. All of these misfortunes have befallen me at one time or another.
And then there’s the book collecting misfortune that you bring on yourself.
A few years ago, I discovered – thanks, Bookstagram! – this gorgeous set of clothbound hardcover editions of E.M. Forster’s novels. Now, I adore Forster; A Room with a View and A Passage to India are two of my favorite books. And these pretty, colorful hardcover designs were irresistible. I was charmed by the little umbrellas on the cover of Howards End and the pretty pink and yellow colors of Where Angels Fear to Tread and my favorite, A Passage to India. Hodder published this collection around 2011, and for a time they were all over bookish Instagram. I thought it’d be simple to complete my collection, and I wasn’t in a rush.
Then I hit a snag. I’d acquired this stack of six books, all reasonably priced and new, with no trouble at all, and in no hurry. But when I tried to complete the collection with the final book, The Longest Journey – not one of Forster’s most popular novels, and not one I’d read – I struck out. Everywhere, and repeatedly. Amazon didn’t have it. Abebooks didn’t have it. Etsy, eBay, Alibris, Blackwell’s – no, no, no, no. In desperation, I almost paid an exorbitant price to buy it from a Swiss academic bookstore’s website – only deciding not to, in the end, because I wasn’t convinced I’d receive the exact edition I wanted (and the idea of paying that much money and then opening a different edition was my book collecting nightmare). I set up google alerts and “wants” on various websites with the Hodder edition’s ISBN, and I waited. I waited for years.
Every so often, Abebooks would alert me that it had “found the book I want!” But it was never The Longest Journey. It was always Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor (the Virago Modern Classics hardcover edition, which I also collect and which I have still not bought). And then one day, I opened my gmail and found another Abebooks alert. Figuring it was Angel again, I opened the email without much hope.
You knew this was going to be a happy ending, right? But it almost wasn’t. I almost didn’t buy this, because it was listed as “acceptable” condition (I usually don’t buy anything below Very Good+) and while it was in the price range I had set, it was more than I really wanted to pay for that condition. But I’d been trying to buy this book for three years; I figured I’d jump on it while I could, and if it wasn’t in the kind of shape I wanted I’d keep looking out for a better copy. But when the book arrived, it was certainly acceptable to me; other than one small black line on the bottom page edge, and a tiny bit of corner bumping – better than I’d seen in other used books with a better condition rating – it was pretty much perfect. And now I had my complete set, just five years after I started the little stack.
Is that not a thing of beauty?
My grand takeaway from this years-long saga was this: YOLO. Life is short. Buy the book. If I’d just jumped on it back in 2019, I’d have had a complete collection all this time. But I was waiting and trying to be sensibly gradual about it and – you see where it got me: years of fruitless searching.
So when I recently became aware of a series of Wind in the Willows sequels – all written and published in the 1990s and now out of print – I decided not to make the same mistake. I love The Wind in the Willows and have read it multiple times, but I was unaware of a series of sequels which are supposed to be as charming as the original. So, I learned from my E.M. Forster experience and I just bought the books. I didn’t space them out at some arbitrary interval. I just found copies that were within what I decided was the price range I was willing to spend to add these sweet books to my library, and then I didn’t overthink it.
And given that this hardcover copy of The Willows at Christmas was the only one on Abebooks, I am glad indeed that I didn’t overthink it. If I had decided to wait until Christmas to buy it – which does sound like something I would do – I am sure it would have been gone, and I’d have repeated the long wait to complete a book collection.
Instead, I’ll be curling up with a cup of cocoa and reading this book by the light of my Christmas tree come December, and I’m delighted by this.
Life is short. Buy the book.
covered in flour 