Brooding 'bout Books

I realized in sign language today that my family's approach to books is unusual. This was not a new revelation, of course, but I faced the fact and looked at it a while.

We had an exam today. In general I enjoy exams (is that a weird thing to say? I suppose that's another way I am weird), but I get really excited when I am surprised by a sign language exam. Which I usually am, since I don't usually note when I have them. It's okay, since I've never gotten lower than 95%, with an average of probably 100. (Bonus questions mean I usually have over 100.)

Anyway, for part of the exam she signed a question which we had to answer using the vocabulary she did. One question was, "Do you have a dictionary in your house?"

I laughed inwardly. The thought of someone not having a dictionary was strange to me.

I replied: "I have literally dozens of dictionaries at my house." Then I thought. Perhaps I don't have literally 24 dictionaries at home. I couldn't think of that many. So I added: "Maybe not literally dozens. Maybe just one dozen."

(I was having fun with the questions that quiz. If I were a teacher-something I have been gathering ideas about as I note how different people teach-I would want my students to. It would be amusing.)

There's the random house, the heritage, the children's, that green one-Webster's, I believe, I am sure there's at least one in the barn...okay, maybe we don't have even a dozen, unless you count Latin-, Spanish-, Greek-English and Bible dictionaries.

After class, I talked to some ladies who were also in ASL 3 and we practiced some vocabulary. I clarified the sign for dictionary for them. It's a D handshape struck against the open hand. "Like you're flipping through pages looking for a word," I explained.

"Who looks up words anymore?" one asked. "That's what we have digital ones for! Nobody has dictionaries."

"We do," I replied.

Then she stated something that rather shocked me. They had no books in their house, no bookshelves, because when they moved they had read all of the books they owned and they were all boxed up now.

She and the other lady continued talking while I tried to comprehend this statement. Somehow the other lady's response sank into my staggering brain. "Why do you still have them if you read them all? You should pass them on so someone else can read them."

I managed to say, "You might want to read them again," when all I could think was why wouldn't you still have them?

The idea that someone has read all of the books they own was still swirling in my mind.

I told them that we had a bookshelf in every room in our house except one of the bathrooms, and even that one often had books in it. I described our book barn with its fifty-two shelves. And they were surprised when I said that if we added together all of the books all of us have read, we still probably wouldn't have read all of the books we have.

That does seem rather ridiculous if you think about it.

But if you're a Beerbower, you don't think about it; it's just natural. And there is the hope that someday you'll find time to read at least a good portion of them. You never know what book you might happen to want.

During class, we had been put into groups of three and each given a paper with furniture on it to pick three of to place in a diagram of a living room. In stumbling sign, I had said every room needed bookshelves, and the other two girls had agreed and even put one on either side of the fireplace. (We arranged a room so awesome that we all wished it was ours-it had a baby grand piano in it.)

Because as Cicero says, "A room without books is like a body without a soul."

According to Horace Mann, we're doing well: "A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them."

And following Erasmus' precedent, most people do: "When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes." Ach...there are so many good book quotes...

'Tis too bad you can't absorb books by simply being surrounded by them...

(Excuse me for the bad post. I don't feel like revising at the moment, and I want to post it today. Someday perhaps I shall write a good essay on this topic.)