Book Wrapt

What constitutes a home librar y varies from one book lover to another

By C y nthi a a da ms

Imag ine a l ibr a r y w it h 51,0 0 0 b o ok s tower ing t wo stor ie s to t he c ei l ing, a m a sse d by Joh ns Hopk ins profe ssor R icha rd Mack sey. T houg h A ma z on’s K ind le debute d 15 ye a r s ago, pr int sur v ive s. Wr iter/ac tor Stephen Fr y de cla re d in 2013, “B o ok s a re no more t hre atene d by K ind le t ha n st a ir s by elevator s.”

I n Ja nu a r y, T h e Ne w Yo rk Tim e s r ele a s e d a phot o of t he l at e M ac k s e y’s d r e a m l ibr a r y, wh ic h i nc lude d e x t r aor d i n a r i ly r a r e e d it ion s. T he i m a g e w a s r e t we e t e d ne a r ly 4 0,0 0 0 t i me s i n a me r e mont h. A lt hou g h t he l ibr a r y w a s d i sm a nt e d a f t e r M ac k s e y’s de at h i n 2019, t he B a lt i mor e bibl ioph i le , a t owe r i ng i nt el le c t , c u r at e d a st u n n i ng d r e a m s c ap e of b o ok s r e ac h i ng t wo st or ie s i n heig ht , w it h t he su r r e a l it y of a mov ie s e t .

Mack sey was book wrapt — i.e. enchanted by his ow n home librar y.

George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore librar y contained 20,000 books, many of them first editions. W hen eight graders are taught Nor th Carolina histor y, field trips to Biltmore Estate provide a breathtak ing example of what it means to be book wrapt and want to assemble a librar y.

Gen Z and Millennia l readers, whose af fection for pr inted book s mir rors screen-time fatig ue, still dream of such a place. A rea l librar y, it is var iously estimated, requires 1,0 0 0 titles — or 50 0 — or fewer. With the advent of e-book s and so many people dow nsizing their homes, a sma ll assembly of treasured volumes, ar t f ully displayed, is ver y much a librar y.

On these pages you find a number of book-wrapt Tr iad readers who have created personal librar ies with var ying numbers of titles and config urations — the largest of them symbolically filled with family heirlooms, like a Victor ian cabinet of cur iosities — yet all of them inspire.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BERT VANDERVEEN

Sharon James is snugly book-wrapt in her Stoney Creek st udy/ librar y. She is sur rounded by ar t work, collectibles and book s as she work s f rom home for a company that conducts inter national hospital inspections.

Here, she spends hours. Her husband, Tom, a High Point Universit y economics professor, keeps a desk nearby.

“I love the war mth of book s!” Sharon James says. “I have them lying around in ever y room. I love leather-bound book s, the r ichness of their color, and I of ten wonder what prompts someone to wr ite what they do.” Countless other volumes spill into the dow nstairs. Like many book collectors, James recently under took a purge to make way for more. T his led to a discover y that some favor ite titles were duplicates. L uck y f r iends inher ited those.

“I have always had to have book shelves in my homes,” James says. “If there were none, then I had them built as I did here. Nothing is more rela xing to me than sitting in my favor ite French chair, with a good book and a glass of wine. A nd once I star t reading and am into it deeply, I hate being dist urbed!”

A for mer nurse, James enjoys “biog raphies about women who do g reat things,” pr izing a first edition of F lorence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing. She is an avid collector of English and A mer ican antiques, so amasses book s on the decorative ar ts.

T his is a common thread among book ies: Pr ivate passions are revealed in their pr ivate librar ies.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AMY FREEMAN

Recent New York transplants R ick and R andy Burge-Willis ow n approximately 1,50 0 to 2,0 0 0 volumes and remodeled to accommodate the excess. (See March 2022 O.Henr y: w w w.ohenr ymag. com/a-leap - of-faith.)

“T here were existing book shelves in the living room, but our previous home had a ‘main’ librar y and a ‘k itchen’ librar y. W hen we moved here, we only had enough space for about a quar ter of our book s. It seemed nat ural to t ur n our large of fice space into a librar y, so we had half of the walls lined with book shelves.”

T hey were caref ul to maintain the or ig inal peck y cypress paneling. “We also wanted to mir ror the classic moldings and tr ims of the rest of the house.”

Cookbook s compr ise the for mer restaurant ow ners’ largest collection, “f rom church cookbook s to James Beard – award winners, including ever y edition of the Southern Living Annual Cookbook since 1979.”

A shley Culler’s Emer y wood home librar y literally rose f rom the ashes. It is a pastiche of past and present — a mini-Biltmore, but she says their previous librar y was far g rander.

L eather-bound volumes collected for decades bur ned in a fire that ravaged the entiret y of High Point’s Shadowlaw n, a French Revival Tudor, in a Gothic st yle straight out of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. No personal images of the architect urally sig nificant 1926 house sur vived.

T heir cur rent home is a smaller version, one that stood mere yards away. It is a beautif ul echo of Shadowlaw n, destroyed in 2010 by a Chr istmas fire. (See December 2016 O.Henr y: w w w.ohenr ymag.com/ out- of-the-shadow- of-shadowlaw n.)

T he Cullers bought the car r iage house that lay in its shadow, reno vated decades earlier by Harold and Peg A mos. O ver t wo years, the Cullers incor porated a few pieces f rom the r uins; stone f rom fireplaces, a few leaded glass windows, and a salvageable rear entr y, and made it their ow n. (T he A moses had sold them Shadowlaw n, as well.)

T he “new” librar y built by the A moses in the conver ted car r iage house, as I wrote then, “most demonstrates the fineness of rooms in the lost house.” A paneled librar y, complete with a soar ing, beamed ceiling, plaster f r iezes, marble fireplace, leaded windows, spiral staircase and balcony, is the Cullers’ “favor ite room.”

Hundreds of collected leather-bound book s in the Cullers’ for mer librar y were destroyed, along with family pict ures, memorabilia and all but a few salvaged items — including a sword f rom Bra xton Culler’s time at militar y school.

“He said to me, ‘I wish I had my sword back.’ So, one day I went through the ashes and the r ubble, and I found it,” says Culler, who took the blackened sword to a local jeweler for cleaning and polishing.

“I sur pr ised Bra xton with that, g iving it to him a year later.” It again hangs by the fireplace.

Now, their librar y feat ures inher ited, ir replaceable family items: a “wor r y” chair possibly bought in the Far East by Jack Rochelle, A shley’s father, and a cock-fighting chair that was possibly reproduced by Globe Fur nit ure, where he was president; an opium pipe f rom Bur ma; solid mahogany elephants that Bra xton Culler acquired in Honduras; a bust of Rochelle by his niece, Kelly Montgomer y, wearing his top hat f rom the Sedgefield Hunt.

But the most pr ized of all is a handmade chess table made for Rochelle and presented by Globe ar tisans on Chr istmas Eve in 1952. Here she now plays chess with her g randchild.

“Bra xton’s daddy’s dog tags f rom the war,” are on the mantle, Culler says. At last, new photos f rom their parents, fill the room. It’s become a repositor y of memor ies.

T he fire’s hidden blessing is this, Culler says: “We are able to incorporate treasured heirlooms into our newer home.”

Like Culler, many book lovers exper ienced a librar y lost.

T hey discussed how dow nsizing forces more attr ition, less accretion.

Retired Greensboro anthropologist Tom Fitzgerald now raids Little Free Libraries while out on walks in Sunset Hills, returning later to donate. He reads extensively, but no longer stocks a personal librar y.

Attorney Charles Younce, lover of biographies, histor y and fiction, keeps stacks of books by his bed — but, he says regretf ully, no librar y. He is winnowing out possessions, something he counsels friends to do.

For mer Greensboro librar ian Pam Nor wood and her husband, Phil, dow nsized a librar y of 2,0 0 0 book s when they retired. T hey culled in ear nest. “We kept about 20 0 book s,” she estimates. “We have book s in each of our little condo’s rooms. T here is not a room for a separate librar y.”

Nor wood buys book s, bor rows f rom the public librar y and reads on K indle when traveling. “I have been accumulating book s all my life, and we still have some book s f rom our childhoods.”

Bibl ioph i le R eg u la Sp ot i, a Sw iss t r a nspla nt to t he Tr iad, wa s inspire d by Bibliost yl e: Ho w We Live at Hom e w ith Bo ok s. She buys e -b o ok s mont h ly but est imates now ow n ing 150 b o ok s despite “g iv ing b o ok s away l ib er a l ly — a nd I on ly wa nt me a n ing f u l b o ok s in my l ibr ar y.”

Greensboro reader Nancy Jones belongs to several book clubs, now keeping a minimum of 30 0 book s in her home. “I have four dif ferent areas with book s collected — one whole wall book- cased in my family room with mostly book s, a few ar t objects. A nd a law yer’s bookcase at the end of my hall.”

Virg inia Cummings, avid reader and fellow “book ie,” created a wall of bookcases in a living room filled with book s she and her husband still pull of f the shelf to reread. “I love to see my family and f r iends browsing and conversing about the book s,” she wr ites. But there’s a caveat: “One son, who reads classics, tr ies to sneak them back to his house.”

T he Tender Bar, based on J. R . Moehr inger’s book, feat ures a scene in which the wr iter’s uncle opens a closet st uf fed with classics. T hese, the uncle says, must be read before he can consider himself educated.

Moehr inger’s first bosses at a book store explain that ever y book on the shelf is a miracle; “it was no accident they opened like a door.” W hether that door is discovered within a g rand librar y, like Vanderbilt’s, or a closet, like his uncle’s, it opens us too. OH