It feels somehow profane to write about books at this moment in history, in the aftermath of the terrible cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China, when tens of thousands of people are missing, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless. But I felt compelled, nonetheless, to link to this beautiful essay in the New York Times by Alberto Manguel, about the various libraries he has built over the years and how they have come to be with him now, in a tiny village in France:

FOR the last seven years, I’ve lived in an old stone presbytery in France, south of the Loire Valley, in a village of fewer than 10 houses. I chose the place because next to the 15th-century house itself was a barn, partly torn down centuries ago, large enough to accommodate my library of some 30,000 books, assembled over six itinerant decades. I knew that once the books found their place, I would find mine.

Manguel’s is not a library of rare books and pricey collectors’ items. Rather, it contains the books he has come to know during a lifetime of reading, going all the way back to the picture books of his childhood. “I have neither the funds nor the knowledge to become a professional collector, and in my library, shiny young Penguins sit happily alongside severe-looking leather-bound patriarchs,” he writes.

At my home in San Francisco, I recently received several heavy boxes from my mother, who had just sold her house in Alabama, and among the little eyelet dresses and tiny shoes of my early childhood were dozens of worn-out books. My three-and-a-half-year-old son helped me unpack the boxes, diving into them as if he’d just discovered a chest of amazing toys. “Read this!” he said. “What’s this one?” And together we went through the piles in no particular order, reading a bit here, a bit there. Occasionally a book would so capture his attention that he would let me read the entire thing to him before he moved on to the next. Some of the books I decided to give away, some were so beaten up they had to go in the recycling bin. Some, for better or worse, would never find a publisher today, because the language with which we speak to children has become so much more careful, more reserved, than it was in the seventies.

But a number of the books from Alabama made it onto the bookshelf reserved specifically for my son in the dining room–located at eye level, so he can go through them at will. The bookshelves in his bedroom are already full to overflowing, and each night he chooses a few for us to read together. In the morning, at his school, we sit in the loft and read together before he begins his day. Of all the things I’ve passed on to my son, this, perhaps, is the one that will serve his best throughout his life–an abiding love for, and I don’t mind saying, addiction to, books.