Last night I watched a program on PBS about the Lewis and Clark expedition. It interested me so much that I decided to read the book about it that I noticed while doing housework some time ago. It's a large book, hard cover, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find. I just have to search through the fourteen bookcases that are scattered among six of the rooms in my house.
About three of the bookcases are filled with my own books, a couple are filled with my son's, and the rest of the books, crammed into the shelves, doubled up in some, were my husband's. I like looking through his books; since his death in 1999 I have, from time to time, perused the shelves. The books remind me of the diversity and intensity of his interests; they remind me of the attributes that attracted me to him when I was a graduate student and he was an assistant professor about 25 years ago.
The first place I looked last night was in the two tall bookcases on the western wall of his study. These bookcases don't contain the oldest or most valuable books-- those are in the den, in a barrister's-style bookcase, each shelf of which has a glass door that lifts up. Nor do they contain the collection of old books on the history of California, which are also in the den. The large collection on the history and culture of Native Americans is in the cases along the eastern wall of the study along with the art books, and the math and science books are downstairs. The books in these two cases are a random assortment, randomly arranged.
For no reason other than entertainment value I decided to close my eyes, turn my head in a random direction, and note the title of whatever book my eyes first landed on when I opened them. The result: Burmese Days by George Orwell. I did this five more times, and found The Republic of Plato, Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, Principia Vol I by Isaac Newton, Selected Works of Lucian (born in Syria c. A.D. 120), and Does God Exist? by Hans Kung.
Extending this game, I decided to look next at the book just to the left of each of these, and I found German Short Stories I, a book of stories by Eugene O'Neill containing Beyond the Horizon, The Straw, and Before Breakfast, Nostromo by Conrad, Hesiod and Theognis (two Greek poets), Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by Hume, and finally, Masked Gods by Frank Waters.
Leave a comment