Addicted to Paradise

This is a Scott Watson guest post. Scott is currently on vacation but I had a stockpile of posts on hand and it seemed like a nice time to get one out while the author is off frolicking. I know very well Mr. Watson is writing on his cottage deck! But also maybe frolicking a little bit?

You might need to be a certain age to appreciate where this is going, but trust me, it will get there. I know we talk about life in the digital world with its interwebs, apps, and connections; all of civilization at your fingertips (or at least a digital facsimile of it) is the earthshattering moment of our lives. If I must define the main “before X” and “after X” event for me—the watershed moment of when my world changed—I would argue it was getting a Toronto public library card (TPL). That young man suddenly had access to every book in TPL’s vast collection.

Now, it should be no surprise that I’m a book person. My home is a battle between my formidable packing/organizing skills and a tsunami of hardbacks, trades, and used paperbacks. This would be worse I feel if the TPL wasn’t in my life. I don’t shop in bookshops as much as my younger self did. Yes, I’m still awash in purchased books. But reviewing my shelves, most are gifts, older books that call back to my BMV or Chapters wanderings. This buying impulse has been replaced with online holds: a system seemingly designed to mitigate my weakness.

Before creating an account and getting that blue card, my world was limited by money and my memory. I had used libraries before, but they were analog, card catalogues and stack wandering. One was always searching. Not in a sense of trying to find that which can’t be put into words; the book that will answer the questions that I keep in my heart for me alone. No, I mean actually searching for a specific book to solve a problem, a specific story I was interested in. So, if I hadn’t heard of the book, or it was not stocked in the library or shop I was in, it didn’t exist. What was worse was if I didn’t know about it, like a profession, concept, a name, or place. I would never find it. There was only so much that serendipity could do.

Now I have the opposite problem. Scarcity has been replaced with unheard-of abundance. We live in the golden age of publishing, more than anyone could possibly read is created every second. A bibliophile’s dream and nightmare all wrapped in one. I have been given the index section of the world (alas not alphabetized) and am shocked by the size and depth of life. On top of that, most of it is free. With a couple clicks I can reserve five books on any topic at the library.  And within a week they appear, all at once, on the reserve shelf, the last four digits of my library card signalling it as a gift for me.

The two main results of infinite knowledge is, one, an underlying anxiety of not reading fast enough and too long list of half read books (sadly deposited in after-hours drop boxes, so my shame is mine and mine alone) and, two, too many books. There is too much to understand, to investigate, and I possess an irrational desire to try. I feel in the grand scheme of things, there are worse impulses to have. I mean what is the harm in being interested in 17^th century publishing industry or the top novelists of Malaysia?

The Internet gives the illusion of wisdom, and it’s perhaps a good thing to have the reminder that things are more complicated, and require work. Putting unread books into the after-hours drop box is a good lesson in reality.

Don’t worry, kind reader, knowing is half the battle. Like a determined overweight man, I’m trying to get this under control. It will be a long process and require a bit of willpower and determination, with occasional backsteps, but I will work to be a more reasonable library hold maker.

As I write this, there are ten library books stacked on my desk beside me: two books on statistics, a self-help book about the “reverse job search”, some collections of essays on AOC, A thick tome on the UK Labour party, two books on Canadian history, a couple of procedural thrillers, and an autobiography of Alan Doyle (of Great Big Sea).

And I know the ten are due by next week, I hope to have read two of them by then. Progress?