The personal library.

I’ve always had a library. Granted, at times, the “library” designation should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. Is a teenager’s closet really a library, even if half is sectioned off for only books?

Can you call it a library if it’s only the three shelves of the built-in wardrobe in your dorm room? I did.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’ve always had a designated space for my books. That’s because I’ve always had books. Reading is my second favourite thing. Family is the first.

I have the first book I was given, several of them, in fact. The first was Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies. It’s a beautiful edition with glorious illustrations. It’s forty-eight years old, so the binding glue is failing. I should probably get a bag. It lives in the children’s section along with the boxed sets of Laura Ingalls Wilder and L. M. Montgomery books from my youth.

The first official library.

I moved into my first apartment at twenty-one. I’d taken some time off university to make money and devote myself full-time to my eating disorder. My parents thought I was waiting for space to open up in the treatment program, but they didn’t live with me.

It was a small apartment, but not minute: a single bedroom with a storage room in the unit. I don’t remember the exact size, but I remember the balcony – it was a tiny triangle, and if you leaned out and around the corner, you could see a park and a lake.

It had a storage room to the right of the door when you entered. It wasn’t a huge space, but it was big enough. I was working as an assistant manager at McDonald’s, so wealthy I wasn’t: I built shelves out of boards, bricks, and milk crates instead of buying something new. The milk crates served double duty as risers and magazine storage, and with my library, I also had a place to display my dolls and stuffed animals.

I’ve always been a fan.

This was the library of my first dictionary. I don’t have it anymore, and I can’t remember when I let it go, but it was massive. I bought a tv table to rest it on. I had visions of a display plinth, but they never materialized. I have a couple still, but they aren’t as old or as interesting. I’d love to have another one someday.

I packed up the library when I moved out at twenty-two, and I stored the boxes at my parent’s home. Losing it was a wrench. I didn’t have a library of my own again until I moved into a house at twenty-seven. I no longer considered the dorm room attempts libraries. They were more like book shrines with stuffie iconography.

The perfect library.

Have you seen Beauty and the Beast? Have you seen the library? In a perfect world where money wasn’t a consideration and the size of my house was considerable, I’d have a library just like that.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves, gorgeous wood and millwork, rolling ladders, windows with protective screening (I’m sure Belle had it installed), display shelves for knick-knacks and collectibles, and comfy seating with good lighting.

I’d add a good sound system as well – I enjoy background music or chatter while I’m reading.

I wouldn’t have a desk, however, or a computer. I don’t write in my library. I don’t watch television in the bedroom either. Some things you don’t mix. I’d probably have plugs with charging options. I’d bring my phone in with me – I’m not a savage.

My basement library has no windows, so it feels a little claustrophobic at times. The shelves are nearly floor-to-ceiling, true, but they’re a collection of mismatched odds and ends, given to me by people who wanted them gone, and the space is compact, so no rolling ladder is required. There is a step stool I sprayed painted a virulent pink should one need to grab a book or box from on high.

I like the frugality – they were all free – and the reusing greenness of them, but I’d be lying if I said the shelving was a beautiful thing. The sizing isn’t always the best either, and not every shelf in my library is adjustable. In my perfect library, I’d have sections for deeper-than-average books and for oversized books. They frustrate me in my current one. I’m forever reorganizing to try and make them work.

I already have a children’s section aka children’s bookshelf, but I’d expand it and decorate thematically. I’d keep it large in anticipation of future acquisitions, and it’d have subsections as well. Dr. Suess is for a different reading level than Virginia Roth. I also need juvenile non-fiction for the I, Spy and Where’s Waldo.

Fiction and non-fiction.

My current library is organized alphabetically within the two sections of children’s books and others. I have a set of encyclopedias, but they live outside of library organization efforts on the bottom shelf of the back bookcase: they never move and they come organized. They have numbers on the spines in case you find the alphabet a challenge.

I’d like to have my current library divided into fiction and non, but that doesn’t work out well with the shelf and book combination in existence.

Librarians would weep. On the bright side, I’m reading.

I’m my perfect library I’d have fiction and non-fiction separate, with fiction organized alphabetically, and non-fiction sorted by Library of Congress subject numbering. All self-help together, all literature together, all mythology, all science, and all design together. Further organized within each section, of course. There’s self-help and self-help.

I’d separate fiction into sub-categories as well: romance, science fiction, mystery, and horror to start with. The problem with this is that some of the sections would be scant. My horror section is particularly weak.

My perfect library also requires book shopping.

Darn.

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header: Benjamin Von Wong

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