June 13, 2008 Friday

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My great aunt was born in 1870. She died in 1964. During her long life, she collected books. Lots of them. I ended up inheriting them. If there's one unique feature about our house, it's the shelves full of books everywhere you go.

I've gotten so used to them being around that I don't even notice them any more. Except recently I stopped to look at the collected works of Tolstoy in a bookcase tucked in a shadowy corner of the upstairs hallway. There were six volumes, published in 1899. I wondered about the rest of that printing and who had owned them and how had their lives been affected by them. I wondered if I had the only set left of that printing. I also had several volumes of Goethe, and another set of William Makepeace Thackery. And a deteriorating hard-bound collection of all of Dickens' works, published while he was still alive.

In 1899, there was no radio or tv, no automobiles (well, very few), and not too much electricity. Someone could spend the time pouring over the works of Tolstoy, Goethe and Thackery. Who has time today? And yet everything in these century-old books is still being reprinted today.

Just for fun, I searched for the collected works of Dickens online. Practically everything is there in text form. Who needs books?

My great aunt did, and she thought enough of them to be sure they were handed down to my generation. But what is the next generation going to pass along? All the great literature on CD's?

And where will my great-aunt's books be in 100 years?