What A Bookcase Says About You

There is something about a library, especially a personal library, that I cannot resist.

The library doesn’t have to be a whole room. I don’t believe I’ve ever been in a home where a whole room is lined with books as you might see in a movie or a mansion. The mansions I’ve been in are usually designer-decorated and bookcases were for displaying photos of fabulous trips, parties, and people, trophies, and awards, and the stack of color-coordinated fabric-covered books.

It’s the shelves lined with thick tomes and arranged by genre, subject, or author that get my attention. Within a few minutes, I can usually get a feeling for what might be stirring in the owner's head, what kinds of thoughts this person or people might think.

I ventured into a house that had many of those faux bookcases, a couple in every room and one at the top of the stairs. But I knew they were here, these books, in this room. I could smell them.

I found the doorway to this treasure trove hidden behind the dresser. For most people hiding these rooms has become an art, but tonight I can tell this person has not put much thought into keeping his secrets secret. This tells me he never thought he’d get caught because so far, he hasn’t.

Tonight the titles are brutal, as expected. We, the people no one speaks of, are here because the person who reads these books is in trouble. Lots and lots of trouble.

You see, books like these are against the law for anyone to own. Well, honestly, not everyone. There are people who possess all the books, and it’s important for things to remain this way. We can’t have everyone reading anything they want. That’s not how things stay the way they are. And we like how things are. And if we don’t, ‘we’ go spend time where we are reminded how we like things, the way they are.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen these books, these titles specifically. I thought the last of these had been rounded up years ago. Seeing them again makes me sigh. My work will never be done. Not when people continue to think they are above the law and keep books like these in their private libraries, hidden from view.

The owner is being rousted from his bed and in a moment we’ll sit down at his desk to discuss his collection. I’d like to sit in the deep overstuffed red leather chair and feel the luxurious feeling I would expect such a thing to create. Instead, I go through the drawers, discovering which ones are locked with each pull of small handles that have the feel of hand-hammered iron. I use a thin piece of metal to break the lock of the lowest right-side drawer and discover our book collector also has a drinking problem.

It’s interesting, the contradictions of these people. They will spend all day explaining the virtues of transparency, decency, and empathy, and then spend their nights living out the exact opposite. Literally like night and day.

But now, in the night, our dear reader has joined me in this room filled with books that should not be here. I should not be here, I tell the man, still in his pajamas now sitting behind his desk with the hand-hammered iron handles, his ass planted in that beautiful overstuffed red leather chair, and his eyes on the lighter I’ve got held up to his precious, yet illegal collection.

“Your books or your family?” I ask the man who has the audacity to pause. I turn and look at him to make sure I have his attention. “Sir? I asked you a question.”

I can see it in his eyes. That look. The one that says these books mean the world to him, just as much or possibly even more than the people sleeping in the rooms upstairs. These books are what make him who he is, to his family, his community, to himself. To them, he is a hero, a rebel. A man with Big Ideas.

To me, he is a criminal, a disruptor, and someone who must be stopped if things are to remain as they are.

Which they will. That’s why I am here. It’s my job to look.

To make sure what’s on your shelves says the right things about you.

Which should be nothing.