More Books

I ordered a couple of books by P.J. Wodehouse but when I crawled into bed to read one - all I could do was look at the binding and how the book was put together. Both were hard copy books, published in Woodstock New York, and printed in Germany. I removed the dust jacket and felt the cloth cover. I was transported by the feel to a collection of books by Dickens that we had as kids. I don't know how my father managed it but there were always the complete works of someone in our Bronx bookshelves: Dickens, Twain, the Tarzan series, Dostoyevsky.

I suspect that my penchant for reading all the books of a favorite author began back then. With Twain, for example, we didn't just read the famous ones, but there was a book of letters, and an essay about how to prepare for a speech (something he knew a lot about). I can still remember him describing how a speech should seem to be spontaneous but was always to be carefully rehearsed.

I'm certain that my father got these sets when neighbors moved away, or from the garbage bin. But once in the house, they were there for years - waiting to be discovered - one by one.

Books that my father had gone through were impossible to read because he circled every word that he didn't know, or that was new to him. Questions written all the margins. For years, he kept a box with index cards where he would write down one new word, and one new definition per day.

We were steeped in literature and classical music. We fell asleep listening to a record about the life (I think it was tragic) of Lizst. My sisters and I still laugh about the dramtic - dum-dum-dum crescendo at the end of the Lizst record when the narrator proclaimed: And Liszt died!

Dum-dum-dum

And the music swelled. And off we went to sleep dreaming about the lives of the musicians in far-away places like Vienna. I'm certain that all the great composers died in Vienna.

Mark Twain - as I remember it - died when the comet came back. He was in bed and asked his daughter - who he was not on good terms with - to bring him his two cats. She carries them to his bed and then he kicks off.

These are memories - probably mixed up memories - from these records we listened to at night.

One day - when the so-called rich people (we always thought everyone around us was rich) - moved from the third floor - we got a complete set of Shakespeare. Now that was a treat. My father would read to us from either King Lear or The Tempest. The Tempest was my favorite because of the magic stuff that went on. The bad guys were also the best characters.

Anyway - I hope this bookbinding bug gets out of my head soon so I can enjoy the books the way I used to.