The Library of Lost Interests, 2

Some books are like old friends, even if you haven't read them for years their presence still brings a lot of happiness. Holding these old books is to return to the past, when one was younger and enjoyed reading them for the first time; or just the physical presence of the book, the cover, the paper on which it is printed, the smell of the book that returns one to the past. Take, for instance, this Sherlock Holmes title, published in 1895, and inscribed "George Henry Donald with best wishes from G.C. Rankam 17/6/95"; I was afraid I'd given this book away when I reduced the number of books I wanted to keep; but here it was, among other books where it had been left, in a box. Another book, one that I taught, is The Great Gatsby (1925), teaching from this second hand copy, every page annotated, it is a book I still love; the carelessness of these people that Fitzgerald describes is more common than many of us are able to accept. I read Irving Stone's Lust for Life (1934), a biography of the artist Vincent van Gogh, when I was a teenager and later I read Vincent's letters to his brother Theo; these letters to Theo van Gogh are a description of Vincent's insights into art and his life as an artist. Apparently, it was Irving Stone's Lust for Life that brought Vincent to a wider audience, and fame, in North America. I was never as much a fan of Paul Gauguin as I was of Vincent van Gogh but I did read Noa Noa (1901), Paul Gauguin's "Journal of the South Seas"; this edition was published in 1957 by The Noonday Press, I bought my copy for only 65 cents at the now defunct NDG Paperback around 1985. I inherited Steel of Empire from my stepfather; written by John Murray Gibbon and published in 1935, it is a history of the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s expansion across Canada. These books that I have described were chosen randomly—they were the first books I took from one of the boxes of books where they’d been kept for the last two years after our basement was flooded. It's good to have them back!

Free book libraries

I like a destination when I go for a walk—I walk with purpose—a free book library is always an ideal destination. Once arrived, I can look at the books, usually take nothing, and continue on my way. I doubt people are reading as much as they used to, it seems most people walk slightly stooped over engrossed by whatever is on the screen of their smartphone; I have no idea what they find so fascinating—porn perhaps ? A text message? The latest news on some singer? World events? What? But it sure isn’t a novel or poetry they’re reading. It isn’t Dickens, it isn’t Shakespeare, it isn’t Allen Ginsberg, maybe it’s something spawned by AI, some creature crawled out of a swamp and created by a computer. Photos taken on 15 June 2025.

No More Progress!

An old 78 RPM recording from my father's record collection

Progress is a mug's game, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot's comment on writing poetry. Some people think that society is improving, that it is evolving to some greater state of generosity, kindness, and wealth. It is more likely that it is devolving into all of us being captives to isolation, loneliness, and being defined as consumers. Change is not progress, it is just change, and in our consumer society change is often the replacement of one consumer item for another more expensive item. Change is buying more stuff we mostly don't need. There are other, probably better, examples but for now let's take a simple example of this, about listening to music. 

Long, long ago people listened to music on wax cylinders, then we moved on to single sided 78 RPM records, then two sided 78 RPM records, then to 33 1/3 RPM vinyl albums, then to 45 RPM records and then cassette tapes and then CDs, and each time we had to replace our record collections with recordings that worked with the new technology; and then our old records, tapes, and CDs were discarded when we (the editorial we) began buying digitized music--we were really just renting it--and this music (our virtual record collection) was streamed to what we now call our device, farewell record players, tape decks, and CD players; farewell to my grandmother's large wooden console record player with a little box of steel needles and old magazines stored on the shelves below the turn-table. Farewell to scratchy recordings, vinyl recordings, and hello to digitized music so evolved that no one can hear the attraction of listening to digitized sound. Farewell to the human dimension of things. 

Did technology really improve so much that we should care to buy into the next latest technology? I don't think so. We could have stayed at vinyl records, and there seem to be enough people who agree with this as 33 1/3 RPM vinyl recordings are making a come-back. We discarded our old record collections when they became obsolete, meaning that the machine required to play this music was no longer being manufactured and new vinyl recordings were also not being made. I always liked to collect certain things, for instance books and old postage stamps, 33 1/3 RPM vinyl albums and compact discs; I listened to my father's 78 RPM records, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, and Glen Miller; I bought CDs of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Van Morrison and Jim Morrison and others. This music was a part of my life.

The last music I wanted to buy were the complete Glen Gould recordings of J.S. Bach, but the technology changed before I could begin; so, farewell to me as a consumer of music. I stopped buying any music when CDs became obsolete; at the most, now, I listen to some music on YouTube. I put all of my CDs onto my computer thinking I would listen to them as I sat writing, I've never listened to any of these copies of my CDs. Human nature hasn't been factored into the mania for "progress". Some of us like to collect things, to have an album cover to look at and liner notes to read, to have something an album or a book that we paid for and then to put it on a shelf; it seems this desire to collect things has been forgotten.  

It is possible (or is it wishful thinking) that a failed technology is the digitized book, while they are still being sold the demand for digitized books seems to have plateaued (except for text books). The paper book, two covers containing pages with printed writing on each page, is among the the greatest technological inventions, it is also inexpensive,  and it will not be replaced; the world of learning, spirituality, and entertainment is available in books, whether a poem, a detective novel, Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, or the King James translation of the bible. The replacement of paper book technology didn't work because digital technology could not compete with the older paper format, a book is tactile and people like to hold a book, write notes in the margins, fold a corner (God forbid!) as a book mark, write their name and date when purchased or read on the cover page, give books as gifts, own a copy of the book, and buy books used or second hand; of course, Amazon and others tried to replace books with Kindle, etc. But books are still among the greatest technological inventions in history. For a while book stores were closing, replaced by Amazon, who wanted to sell digitized books that you could read on your Kindle that they also sold. They wanted to sell the device and then sell the customer a digitized book; it was a means to divert profit from the publishers to, in this case, Amazon. 

Digitized books peaked and paper copies of books are now selling more copies than ever. It used to be a sign of learning and intelligence to have, in your home, bookshelves filled with books and some of us enjoyed browsing at the titles of a friend's home library. Your books reflected who you were, what kind of interests you had, even your education. Not the best example but a fun example, remember the old Dell detective novels, they were purposely designed to be small enough to fit into the back pocket of a pair of jeans; some people used to walk around with a book in their back pocket, reading was that important to people. Remember the map on the back cover of these books? Remember buying second hand copies of these Dell books just for the cover art? They are still worth collecting and the Dell novels are still worth reading. We have fond memories of these and other books, we don't have fond memories of Kindle books, browsing Amazon's website, storing music in the Cloud, or what have you. It hasn't quite worked out as they had planned. People still enjoy visiting book stores, not just shopping online. But the damage is done regarding music, I doubt I will ever visit a record store again, I don't even think there are any left in Montreal.