A friend was sitting in a chair in my living room, watching TV while I cooked. There was an item on the news about an author’s new book and my friend reached out to touch a book on a table near her chair. “Is this the book they’re talking about?” she asked. I said that it was, and she said, quietly — almost to herself — “Of course you would have it.” This thought may have reflected a memory of the reading groups that I participated in with other art directors during my labors at Famous-Barr in St. Louis, for when we worked together, my friend was both a contributor to and beneficiary of the lending library in the advertising department. She knows of my thirst for books and lust for reading.
The “tiny libraries” that are blooming on Indianapolis’ paths and near its bus stops remind me of that little library started at Famous-Barr by the advertising department. It was proposed as a fundraising device for needy families, and people with books to share would bring them in and put them on the bookshelf dedicated to that purpose. The books could then be rented for 50 cents, or purchased for a dollar. At the end of the year we would tally the funds and donate them. This was in 1996, and this honor system grew hundreds of dollars sown by readers into a tin box on the shelf with the books. I do not remember, when the idea was proposed, anyone saying that they had heard of a “tiny library,” but the bookshelf was a rich source of new material for me.
I have written before of the importance of books and reading to me. People know this, and share the passion. When I climb into Greg Meyers’ chair so that he can cut my hair, I wait for the fall of the cape about my shoulders, listen for the snick of the scissors he chooses to start my cutting, and am never disappointed in my anticipation of his soft-voiced inquiry: “So, what are you reading?” The sharp whisper of his scissors brings the soft shower of a gray-haired stranger’s hair from my head, and as it gathers in the folds of the cape, Greg and I will share what we are reading.
I have eleven new books: Telegraph Avenue and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon; Ordinary Light: A Memoir, by Tracy K. Smith; The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr; The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson; The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins; Secondhand Souls, by Christopher Moore; The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, by David Talbot; Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles, by Bernard Cornwell; Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, by Elijah Wald, and The Art He’d Sell For Love, a slim volume of poetry from Dan Carpenter.
Three of those books were given to me by my sister, who gets books as a perk of her job as a TV producer, and who has given many to me. Another St. Louis friend, a fellow Pittsburgher, sent me an urgent e-mail: “you must read this book” (she deigns capitalizations and punctuation in casual communications), which led to the purchase of two books; of the four books I discussed with Greg, I purchased two, one of which was nominated for the 2015 National Book Award for nonfiction.
Perhaps, after I leave Telegraph Avenue, I will learn if Tracy Smith’s Ordinary Light has won the National Book Award, and Greg and I can discuss or reading again, as he cuts.