Book Wrapt What constitutes a home library varies from one book lover to another By Cynthia Adams
68 O.Henry
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BERT VANDERVEEN
I
magine a library with 51,000 books towering two stories to the ceiling, amassed by Johns Hopkins professor Richard Macksey. Though Amazon’s Kindle debuted 15 years ago, print survives. Writer/actor Stephen Fry declared in 2013, “Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” In January, The New York Times released a photo of the late Macksey’s dream library, which included extraordinarily rare editions. The image was retweeted nearly 40,000 times in a mere month. Although the library was dismanted after Macksey’s death in 2019, the Baltimore bibliophile, a towering intellect, curated a stunning dreamscape of books reaching two stories in height, with the surreality of a movie set. Macksey was book wrapt — i.e. enchanted by his own home library. George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore library contained 20,000 books, many of them first editions. When eight graders are taught North Carolina history, field trips to Biltmore Estate provide a breathtaking example of what it means to be book wrapt and want to assemble a library. Gen Z and Millennial readers, whose affection for printed books mirrors screen-time fatigue, still dream of such a place. A real library, it is variously estimated, requires 1,000 titles — or 500 — or fewer. With the advent of e-books and so many people downsizing their homes, a small assembly of treasured volumes, artfully displayed, is very much a library. On these pages you find a number of book-wrapt Triad readers who have created personal libraries with varying numbers of titles and configurations — the largest of them symbolically filled with family heirlooms, like a Victorian cabinet of curiosities — yet all of them inspire.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
