Books

Who among us?… Michael Dirda is a professional book reviewer (I can remember reading his stuff at least thirty years ago, when the Washington Post Weekly was a tabloid on paper), so he’s had extraordinary access / reasons for book hoarding:

When my wife calculated that there were 300 boxes of books stacked precariously in our basement, I was sure she exaggerated. To my eyes, the stacks weren’t really that precarious. The overall book situation, however, was much worse than her estimate: The basement only accounts for half of my, ahem, collection. Bookcases line three walls of my living room. The attic holds a small library of late Victorian and early modern popular fiction. For years I even rented a storage unit until a kindly neighbor agreed to let me transfer its contents — all books — to a disused greenhouse in her backyard. I doubt the author of “Caring for Your Books”— a small paperback I wrote years ago — would approve of keeping first editions in a greenhouse.

Under the shadow of the coronavirus, two unwelcome thoughts increasingly nagged at me. First, how would my family cope with all this paper clutter if I weren’t around? Second, shouldn’t I use this period of isolation to do something about the sheer number of books? Three weeks ago a truck deposited a Zippy Shell storage container at the top of my driveway.

My plan was simplicity itself. I would transfer my subterranean hoard into the Zippy Shell, then thoroughly wash and clean the basement’s linoleum floor and concrete block walls. Years ago, I’d built a number of wooden bookcases and these would stay, but I’d also order some easy-to-put-together metal shelving from Home Depot. After rearranging the basement it would, ideally, resemble a miniature version of the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library. Anyway, that was the dream. Most importantly, all the books would fit on shelves or they’d be gone. I would address the attic and the greenhouse at some vaguely distant future date.

To empty the basement I hired a 16-year-old neighbor kid who — dutifully masked — spent three hours shifting 100 boxes up the steps and into the storage container. Two days later his arms and shoulders were still too sore for additional heavy lifting. Kids these days! My youngest son and I then carried more books up and out until Zippy was packed solid. The basement, however, was nowhere near empty.

It was clear to my lightning brain — I’m not a Sherlockian for nothing — that I needed to free up space in the storage pod before I could put more boxes into it. There was, I deduced, just one way to accomplish this: I would have to start selling or giving away some of my books right now rather than later. But which ones should go?…

I, too, was hoping to speed up my deaccessioning project during lockdown. (After two years — three? — I’ve gotten as far as the F-through-H authors on the fiction shelves. Many books have gone, but almost as many have been added. And I haven’t been able to do anything about the nonfiction, which would probably go slightly faster, because those books got boxed up when the central bookcases had to be removed so the experts could pump more cement to fill the gaps in the space between the floor and the basement, and now the Spousal Unit’s boxes of books are blocking mine.)

But even though I haven’t gone beyond our yard in three months come Sunday, among other IRL problems, I am spending even more time on the hellsites of the internet…

Irresistible Read: <em>“All the books in my 300 boxes sparked joy…”</em>Post + Comments (126)

LeVar Burton still loves reading aloud. His storytelling might be what you need right now. https://t.co/6RcNG92RJT

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 11, 2020

… Burton, 63, has always had a particular love for the simple act of reading aloud, he says, a form of human connection that he views as vital, especially in times like these. Confined as we are, unsettled as we feel — when has the sense of possibility, the transportive power of stories, felt more necessary?

On his first night of what would ultimately become a month of readings, Burton begins with “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale,” a dark work of speculative fiction by English author Neil Gaiman. Burton delivers the story with polish and precision, expressive but never distractingly so, careful to make the voices of characters feel distinctive, not over the top…

Burton is sitting in his crimson-walled home office, the room where he has been hosting most of his live streams. One of the 13 Emmys he won for “Reading Rainbow” gleams on a small table behind him, below the framed cover art of his 1997 debut sci-fi novel, “Aftermath.” Burton wears a black T-shirt with a silver pendant around his neck, his look of choice for his recent online appearances, though on this particular afternoon, he is speaking only to a reporter on the other side of the screen.

“It’s one of my favorite ways of storytelling, reading aloud. I love it. I am aware that it’s something that I don’t suck at,” he says. His laugh is a rich, slow-building crescendo. “It brings me joy to know that I am in my purpose.”

“Reading Rainbow” ended its 26-year run in 2009, but fans who grew up watching have since flocked to Burton’s popular podcast, “LeVar Burton Reads,” which he launched in 2017. In recent years, he’s heard from many who have been listening to him for decades, and he’s come to realize “just how powerful that seems to be for people,” he says. “They love hearing my voice. It brings them calm. And I think at this time, more than any other, I felt a responsibility to step up, to step into the moment because I could.”

Burton’s new live-stream series has been helpful for him, too, he says, as he adjusts to his own transformed lifestyle. He refers to himself as an “itinerant storyteller,” a constant traveler who is typically only home for a week or two at a time, when he might dine out with friends or soak in his favorite local hot spring. Now he is homebound, along with his wife of 27 years, Stephanie Cozart Burton, their 25-year-old daughter, Michaela Burton, and his mother-in-law. In the absence of his usual routine, Burton has found structure and meaning in his weekly Twitter readings, which regularly draw an international audience of more than a million viewers.

“Stories are so innately part of the human condition,” he says. “And stories, like music, have the power to bring us together, and I think it’s that magnetizing property that is really important right now, especially in this situation where isolation is so much a part of how we are being required to live.”

For as long as he can remember, Burton has known that he wanted to be someone who helps others think about the deeper questions: Who are we? What is our purpose here? What will we do in the time we have? He credits his mother, Erma Gene Christian, a schoolteacher, social worker and voracious reader, with instilling a clear sense of purpose in her three children. “I was raised in a family where your life is meant to be about service,” Burton says.

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Look for the Helpers: Levar Burton Loves Reading AloudPost + Comments (21)