Books on the nightstand

Although winter is in the air, I am only just catching up with Cam 60, the summer edition of the University’s alumni magazine.  Big, glossy, and parochial, the quarterly issues are full of news only a ‘Light Blue’ could love, targeted to Cambridge’s wealthy elder audience of potential donors.  “The Best Statue in Cambridge” and “An Idler’s Idyll” (Byron and Punting, respectively) crowd against ads titled “The Vitality of Thought” and “Take choice of all my library” (Judge School Executive Education and the Cambridge University Press, of course).  This is clearly not marketing to the masses.

Why, then are the faculty book recommendations so ordinary?

John Simpson (Magdalene 63; BBC World Affairs Editor) recommends Did You Really Shoot the Television? (an account of youth) and Constable in Love (an artists biography).  Katie Derthem (Magdalene 88, broadcaster) is reading The Devils Casino (Gossip from the women who knew them best), while Robert Gordon (Professor of Hebrew) chooses The Invention of the Jewish People, and Teri Apter (Senior Tutor, Newnham) suggests How the Baby Boomers Took their Children’s Future.

The scholars chose mix of classics in their field and popular general works, for the most part, even considering it was a list for summer reading, it feels light.  Surely I could have chosen better.

I scampered upstairs to test the intuition against my own bedside reading.

I’ll discount the C# Programming manual and the Dutch language tutorials, two business books and a review of postmodern philosophy.  Super Sad True Love Story is my nod to popular fiction. 

I am proud that the stack holds a primer on Optimization Theory, a review of Stochastic Modeling, and a serious work on the History of Western Philosophy (Hobbes to Hume).  Better yet, they aren’t at the bottom of the stack, implying an active interaction between writer and reader each evening.

I hope its not just the order that helps me to sleep.

And, or course, Watching the English, the definitive sociologic guide to British Behaviour.  I wish that the UnDutchables folks had done something this good about the Low Countries.

At least, I’d know when to talk about the weather and when to avoid revealing my profession.

An eclectic and characteristic collection, probably one that mirrors the nightstands of the Cambridge dons.  But choosing just one to recommend, one that people will read, remember, enjoy.  I looked at my stack and sighed.  I really want to recommend Stochastic Modeling, but I know Super Sad would be the right choice for an anonymous mass audience.

And maybe that’s where it all goes wrong?

Browsing bookshelves

Dutch homes always have a collection of books, often placed on shelves near the front windows where they can be seen from the sidewalk. American houses tend to follow a British model, where books are in a separate study, off the public areas in a quieter part of the house.

The Kettle’s Yard house had bookshelves scattered throughout: my favorite was a nook with a Massachusetts-style armchair tucked back by the fireplace.

I took a bit of time to sit and just get the perspective of why it had been put in that spot, of what ambience it held.  It nicely nestled into a warm corner filled with afternoon light, the shelves glowed and the books encircled.  Lots of interesting titles, mostly old travel stories, some biographies clustered together.

The more I looked through the books, the more I started to notice their order.  There was a shelf of science, a corner of European politics grouped by nation.  Little evidence of language or mathematics, and no children’s books.  I was taken both with the types of books, but also their ordering. 

Especially their ordering.

I think that people naturally create libraries out of their books, first around favorite authors or topics like ‘travel guides’ or ‘Dutch language tutorials’.  Then reference books accumulate, scratchpad knowledge for solving problems and settling disputes.  Philosophical / theological volumes soon crowd against coffee-table books from favorite destinations and artists.

There comes a time when I bought shelves to hold it all, leading naturally to a need to organizing it.  Often by topic, easily, but soon leading to questions of what to put at eye level, which go upstairs in the study or down near the living room.  Are there gaps to be filled, perhaps more books or better with knick-knacks?  Which do I want to public to see, a reflection of my learning and aspirations; which are private treasures, not meant to be loaned to others.

I like to think that the contents and the ordering of the Kettle’s Yard books similarly reflect their owner.  Someone deliberately put particular volumes where they could be noticed and read, others where they could be easily found.  I could almost read what was important to them from the collection of spines, could see that their poetry, just off the left hand at armchair level, was how they spent their time.  More than the collection of art, the ordering of books finally was what most made this space intimate and personal.

I cart my 10 boxes of books from apartment to apartment across Europe, some for reference, some aspirational, many hold personal meaning. And there is a particular order to the shelves: I typically spend a day moving things around until I get it right.

It’s a funny habit, isn’t it?  But so telling about people.

(And a wonderful collection of pictures of personal bookshelves can be found at desire to inspire.)

"A home without books is a body without soul." 

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Thursday exploring Heffers

I ran into the fellow living upstairs (but not for much longer) who told me he was thinking of retiring. What are you going to do? I asked (a question for myself as well, considered late at night). He shrugged. “Hobbies, I suppose…” What sort? He vaguely describes work that he started, then abandoned, years ago; aspirational things that he isn’t sure he’ll enjoy. Stuff. Another shrug. Maybe more reading? I offer. He brightens, “Yes, certainly more reading.”

I've found that expatriate living is surprisingly hard on reading. Few English-level books, little time to spare: I’m reduced to digesting the weekly Economist on the bike, nibbling a few pages of technical books in bed, or sniffing at paragraphs of Dutch in the morning. But serious literature and high philosophy…it’s been years.

With an uncommitted day in Cambridge, I decided to spend an hour in Heffers, the local academic bookshop. It's a delight: vast areas devoted to literature, religion, arts, and language. Nothing like the institutional Barnes and Noble stores, these shelves challenge and inspire.

I wandered the stacks, gathering impressions.

Physics hasn't changed at all: like many of the traditional maths and sciences, the basics seem fixed. The presentation changes, the equations loook timeless. I feel as though I could still pick up the Classical Mechanics and ElectroMagnetics books and continue where my studies left off.

There is a gratifyingly huge philosophy section. I read a fair amount in graduate school for rrecreation and really came to enjoy the interlay of ideas and arguments, the alternative ways of looking at everyday experiences. It seems a waste that philosophers in our century have withdrawn from the popular discourse, leaving the void to be filled by psychology and pundits. I tried to pick up the trail a couple of months ago, searching the internet for philosophy sites, loooking in academic departments to see what philosophy professors were doing, seeing if text I'd enjoyed had been updated. Nothing. It's like it died out 50 years ago.

As might be expected Keynes owns the Management and Economics section. A Cambridge graduate, he earns the right to have his own display shelves. Gratifyingly, the usual suspects like (the still quite-mad) Richard Branson are on the markdown shelves to one side. There is a well-stocked marketing section that had solid books on process and content rather than the big-type / one-idea titles that dominate airport bookshops.

The travel shelves are recognizable from a distance, with colorful spines that contrast with the earth tones that dominate all of the weightier sections.

The history section had absolutely no Dutch history: nothing except the tomes dedicated to each of the major western european powers. I was reallly surprised. There were a half-dozen Dutch language books, and even a woman buying a grammar book for her courses, but the Low Countries were really under-represented. I'm never shure whether the Dutch take this neglect as an irritation: my impression has always been that, as a culture, theey enjoy flying under the radar where they can chooe their own way.

In contrast there always seems to be yet another computer language to learn, with no particular justification for bothering.