On my Zoom calls, the virtual background behind me is a photo of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at my camp in northern Maine. Occasionally, I get questions about it and where I am zooming from. My camp library was built a few years ago to not only house my Maine “away” office — as well as my fly-tying corner and painting cubby — but also store the vast number of books I have refused to part with since I moved my family to the Hamptons in 1972. Every year at the end of the winter season in Palm Beach, I ship to Maine the books I read while in Florida. Then, around Labor Day, all of my summer reading from East Hampton is sent up as well. I have accumulated a wide variety of subjects, from fishing, of course, to biography, fiction, and nonfiction. I refuse to give away any of these books. At times, I question my reluctance to donate some, if not all, of them to a charity for resale and think about what has motivated me to be so entrenched in book collecting. Well, I think the underpinnings of my “book-keeper” habit go back to when I was growing up in western New York in the 1950s. I was regularly seduced by the bookshelves at Scrantoms Books & Stationery at 334 East Main Street. This magnificent library-like building sold everything: fiction, nonfiction, art, architecture, and, of course, all the bestsellers of the time. My dad had a parking lot on East Main Street where I worked for him on weekends and during the summer months. Conveniently, it was located right behind Scrantoms. On the occasions that my father was away running another one of his lots, I would sneak off to Scrantoms after Lawrence — the one full-time employee — and I had finished parking the cars that paid by the month and, therefore, stayed in place. There were only a few transitory parkers and Lawrence took care of those while I was next door, where I would sit on the floor among the book stacks and read away. I didn’t have money at the time to buy a book, and fortunately for me, the Scrantoms salesclerks always kindly looked the other way. I recall sitting there reading, for the first time, Hemingway’s “Across the River and into the Trees,” which was published in 1950. Scrantoms closed in 1988; like most independent bookstores, it couldn’t compete with the likes of Barnes and Noble and other large bookstore chains popping up in shopping centers around the city. I was long gone from Rochester by then, having established my law practice downstate.
My passion for being surrounded by books at home started in my early youth when my dad would bring home the Christmas gifts he received from the employees at Scrantoms, who were well aware of my love of reading. They usually gave him a brand-new hardcover copy of the latest bestseller as well as one or two classics. Dad would have preferred a bottle of whiskey, I am certain. My mother only read the local newspaper, and Dad did not read English. Once the books were unwrapped and I had carefully looked them over, I would line them up neatly on the shelves to the left of the fireplace in the living room. At first, as a youngster, I had some difficulty when I tried to read them; however, as I got older and more educated — and learned to use a dictionary — it was easier. By the time I left for college at the end of the summer of ’58, I had read all the books on the shelf by the fireplace as well as countless classics that had been recommended by my English teachers and the Scrantoms salesclerks. My interest in reading probably inspired me to major in American literature and history, as American studies were then called.
These days, I regularly add to my collection books from book clubs, or I buy new ones that interest me based on the reviews. I even find book-buying inspiration in authors’ obituaries. On occasion, I reread books I acquired years ago, as they bring back memories of when I read them for the first time. When I am up in Maine, where all the older volumes are stored, I will pull one down and check the date when it was first published so I can frame the time and place where I once nestled into a corner at some point in my life and read away.