Last week, Susan and I began training to serve as volunteers in a library. I have a bit of library experience. My college experience started with a work/study position in the college library, where I learned to check books out and in, organize a book cart, shelve books, and perform other duties. This was when libraries had card catalogs that were actual cards before computerized catalog systems. I learned how to file cards in the card catalog when new books were added to the collection. I also serve as the volunteer librarian of our church’s small collection of books, keeping the library organized and promoting the circulation of books. In our volunteer position, we will mostly be shelving books as they are returned to the library. Like my college position shelving books will involve a bit of dusting and cleaning and general organization.

I plan to keep my smartphone handy when I am volunteering. I will make sure that my phone is set to be silent and not make noise if a call comes. I don’t expect that there will be any calls that I need to answer. People who call can leave a message. I plan to keep my phone with me as I work so that I can use the camera to photograph the covers of books that are interesting to me. I’m pretty sure that I will find a lot of books that I would like to read.

It isn’t as if I don’t already have a list of books I want to read. I have a stack of books that I have purchased that I have not yet finished reading. I’m a bit quicker to read books I have checked out from the library as they have a due date, and I know I will need to return them promptly. The library works for me for some books. Other books, however, require a trip to a bookstore.

I’ve already written about children’s books. Some books need to be in our house to read at will without requiring a trip to the library. I’ve read Go Dog, Go hundreds of times, and I want to read it repeatedly for as long as a child wants to hear me read it. Recently we bought Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons for our grandson because he wanted to bring that book home with him on each visit to the library.

There are other books, however, that end up on my shelves for different reasons.

The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Cambell is a book that is so densely written that I needed to read it very slowly. Sometimes, it would set me off on a quest to read another book, and I would lay it aside for days and weeks before resuming my reading of it. If I had tried to read it as a library book, I would have had to check it out, return it, and check it out again several times before finishing it. I also keep it handy because now that I have read it, I refer to it when writing or when another book sparks a memory of something I read there.

The novel Sun House by David James Duncan is a book I would not have finished had we not ended up with a copy we own. Now that I’ve read it, I’d gladly give it to anyone who wants it. I have no intention of rereading it. However, I probably won’t find someone who wants to read it because I wouldn’t recommend it. I looked forward to reading it. I have read other David James Duncan novels with great joy. We have two copies of his The River Why on our shelf, and I frequently use quotes from that book. It took him eleven years to write Sun House, and it reads as if he tried to cram every idea he had in those eleven years into a single story. Had I checked it out of the library to read, I would have returned it without finishing it and wouldn’t have checked it out again.

The memoir Mango Tree by Carey Newman is short but so densely written that I will read a chapter or two and then set it aside. Newman is in love with the English language and seems set on cramming as many words as possible into each chapter. Although I have a reasonable vocabulary, I need a dictionary when reading his book.

Amanda Gorman’s poems in Call Us What We Carry are too good to read only once. I like to read them silently, imagining her voice as she reads. I looked up some of them on YouTube to hear her voice. But I also like to read them out loud, allowing their rhythm to seep into my thinking.

I have a collection of Elie Wiesel novels. I read each as soon as I purchased it, and though I’ve reread some sections, I doubt I’ll ever read through them again. Still, they are books that I want to own. I like seeing them together on the shelf. I pull them out occasionally to show a guest or remind myself how they have impacted my thinking.

My copy of The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh by Walter Ross once belonged to my father. I still remember him taking it from the shelf and handing it to me to read. The same is true of my copy of We Seven, which was written by the first seven astronauts selected by NASA. I like to take it from the shelf because it reminds me of my father. We shared and loved many books together.

James Fowler’s Stages of Faith is a book I pull out every time I teach a Christian Education or Faith Formation class. I know it is dated, and I know I need to turn to newer books like Lisa Miller’s The Spiritual Child, but the ideas in that book are important and too often overlooked by those working with children in the church.

For now, my life is a combination of books I borrow and books I buy. I hope that the pictures I take at the library lean towards books to borrow. I don’t have much room on my shelves for more books.