The Library
written by: Mike Henry
Not many people can boast a library in their house unless they happen to live in a stately mansion. I bought this old house many years ago and, although it’s no mansion, the room which I would eventually call my library was what appealed to me the most about the place.
It’s really just a study but the walls were lined with bookshelves as the previous owner was a writer who, like me, had a great love of books and literature. I needed a place to store my considerable collection of books and the bookshelves in my study hold a treasure trove of works, works by authors famous and many not so famous but they are all precious to me. As a schoolboy, I loved to read Robert Louis Stevenson and still recall the sense of wonder and adventure I felt at reading Treasure Island. And I will never forget the feeling of loss when I came to the end of that story – it was like losing a friend.
Mother often used to berate me for living in a world of fantasy as I always seemed to have my nose stuck in some book or other.
‘He even reads the back of the cornflakes pack at breakfast,’ I once heard her remark to an amused aunt.
Many years after reading Treasure Island I came across a battered copy in a second-hand book shop and bought it on a whim thinking, ‘I’ll read that again some time.’ Of course, I never did but it’s still here, on my bookshelf, just waiting for me to pick it up and start reading…
Later in life I collected other books and built up quite a little library but eventually came to the realisation that books are really useless – just lumps of paper with ink on them – that is, until they are read and then – the magic happens!
And what magic those lumps of paper reveal! Who can not be moved by the mastery of Shakespeare or the wit of Oscar Wilde or the aching cry for social justice depicted in Steinbeck’s novels?
Now my little library contains a world of adventure, romance, horror, knowledge, science, history, and art. But there is one shelf which is empty and it is that empty shelf which contains that which I begrudgingly admit to be ‘The Truth.’
This empty bookshelf is waiting to be filled with the books I wanted to write, the books I should have written, the books I need to write, and, let’s admit it – the books I will never write. It is there as a constant reminder of what I didn’t do – a psychological whip for my wimpy would-be writer’s back.
I even know the names of many of these invisible, unrealised works. My earliest works would recount my early travels and have titles like ‘Happy in Hippyland’ or ‘A Youth in Europe’ or ‘On the Road Again.’ Later I would have experimented with more esoteric themes and produced works with names like ‘Thunder in the Night,’ ‘The Seeing Eye,’ and ‘Beyond the High Mountain.’ Perhaps a cookbook would have been an amusing departure from my usual offerings: ‘Pants in the Pantry,’ ‘The Bachelor’s Guide to Good Grub,’ or ‘Kitchen Cheat’ might have been popular with young metrosexuals wanting to impress their inner circle.
Later come the serious publications – the blockbusters! ‘Spring in November’ was to be a tearjerker, a tender tale about an elderly couple who meet in a nursing home and fall madly in love. My sensitive treatment of the subject receives critical acclaim and the film rights sell for a fortune! This is followed up with another ‘best seller,’ (oh, how I love that term!). ‘After the Fall’ would be a sequel to ‘Spring in November,’ after all, when you’re on to a good thing, stick with it, and tells the story of how one of the aging lovers succumbs to the ravages of time and leaves their mourning partner to face a lonely future. That one would have sold well in the States!
There are others, of course, too numerous to mention – I would have been a prolific writer! The last one is a trilogy: Book one: ‘Coulda,’ Book two: ‘Woulda,’ Book three: ‘Shoulda.’ – the ‘Didna’ Trilogy’!
But writing is a lonely pursuit as anyone who’s tried it knows only too well. It can be torture to sit at the keyboard and agonise over words that just refuse to appear on the screen. Or the hours spent drafting and redrafting a plot in an attempt to get it right, something believable – something readable! I ponder the famous quote from Ernest Hemmingway, often attributed to other authors – “Writing is easy-you just sit at a typewriter and open a vein.” It is strangely satisfying to know that even the masters of the craft experience the same frustrations.
Now I sit here and pick up the latest addition to my little library, a slim paperback given to me by my sister for my eightieth birthday. I wonder if I should start reading it right now or wait until I’m caught up with my considerable backlog.
I decide that now’s the time – it’s entitled, ‘Living with Alzheimer’s.’
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