Walking to my storage unit last week I passed an open unit that was full of books from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It was such a shocking and pleasant surprise to see this amazing display of books that I decided to poke my head inside... I announced myself with a few "hellos" and out from behind a stack of hundred year old books this little old man answered. He poked his head up like a surprised dear who had stopped at a pond for a drink.
I began to ask him a few questions about his book collection; where his books were from, what type of books he collected and how many he had? Harold was his name and he told me that he had over 30 thousand books. He started “collecting books seriously” in his twenties and had books ranging from the 1580's Spanish Armada to 2008 Harry Potter. It was a surreal and magical feeling to stand among that array of books. I asked Harold about the books he has read, his favorite authors and what he planned to do with all of his books?
After going over all my questions and listening to a few stories about how Harold came across 1930's VOGUE magazines, original Beatles vinyl albums and 1700’s French enlightenment Voltaire books. He told me he was thinking about selling all his books, sadly he said “people don't read the way they used to so I don’t think I’ll have too many buyers”.
Hearing Harold say this really got me thinking... I did a little home work and it seems that since the 1960’s book publishing has slowly decreased and in 2005 with the strong push of the internet and concepts like The Nook, audible.com and the "Going Green" movement; book sales and publishing are decreasing rapidly.
Magazines and newspapers have reported some of their worst years in history. Companies looking to advertize now have Google add words, Yelp and countless other options. In a way I feel like books, magazines and newspapers are slowly becoming a thing of the past... And if we as a society can allow this to happen with publications that are a physical memento of our social evolution what else about our history will we let slowly fade away?
Harold inspired me to read, buy books and seek out parts of our history that are fading away. I asked him if he would be interested in having lunch with me in the upcoming weeks. I very much look forward to listing to his stories about what I may have forgotten or never have know if I would not have asked and listened. I guess the point of my writing is, we have to embrace the past in order to inspire the future.
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