My Library, Myself

My Library, Myself 1

Cap Pannell for The Chronicle Review

Enlarge Image
close My Library, Myself 1

Cap Pannell for The Chronicle Review

I have spent a considerable portion of my life handling books. I've read them, as a young child, an older student, and a professor of English; I've bound them, as a worker in a library to help pay my way through school; and I've moved them, from home to home, office to office, shelf to shelf.

"It's like moving mountains," my son, who has his own collection, observed one day, and I have to agree, although it took me a lot longer to come to that conclusion. For a long while, I would