The Books That Changed My Life by Bethanne Patrick

Author:Bethanne Patrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regan Arts.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

on How Reading Is Her Life

“When it comes to books, I’m a gazillionaire”

Listen, if you wanted to find out which book changed my life, you should have asked me when I was six. I’m too old now to have anything change me.

I read all the time. All the time. That’s what I do. It started when I was young and it has just never stopped. It drove my parents crazy. What I would do was, I would get a book and put it, open, in the top drawer of my desk. I would have my homework out on top, and since my mother was constantly shouting, “Are you doing your homework?” when she started coming down the hall I could just nudge the drawer shut with my belly and all she would see was my homework.

I was born in 1950. It was a different time. An earlier time. A simpler time, so simple that when I wanted to read my book in bed beneath the sheet with a flashlight, I had to borrow my father’s flashlight, because children didn’t have money then! Children weren’t allowed to walk around with money. Also, children weren’t allowed to do things that were too solitary or individual. My parents urged me to go outside, play with others, and just come to the living room and watch TV with the family. The 1950s were all about community. If you liked being alone too much, there was something wrong with you.

Which may be why I also buy so many books. I never had money to buy them when I was younger. At some point in my twenties, when I was trying to make sure I had money for things like rent and food, I said, “When it comes to books, I’m a gazillionaire.” I decided that I would always buy any books that I wanted, no matter what the price. It’s not like I’m buying rare first editions, although at this point I do have a few of those. I buy books to read, and I read every day. All day.

This causes problems in Manhattan, real-estate problems. I have ten thousand books. I know this, because I just moved. Of course my new apartment has many bookshelves, and let me tell you, my books are kept in beautiful shelves, glass-fronted cabinets, the first editions right there along with the crumbly yellowing paperbacks. I do work with a private librarian, and we have all kinds of categories for my books, although he rightly insists that there shouldn’t be a biography section because a person’s biography should be shelved right along with her other books.

Much of my time used to be spent shopping for books. I remember when Fourth Street was just one secondhand bookstore after another, each filled to the ceiling with unreachable selections and each staffed by a grumpy Jewish man who usually sat out on the sidewalk and seemed reluctant to part with whichever book or books you actually wanted to buy. It was like an argument just to give him your money and go home with your treasures.

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