How can Books Produce a Personal Experience? by Valen chirkes

Valentina Chirkes

How can Books Produce a Personal Experience?

Integrative Seminar 2 March 2022

Symbols

The best way to understand my thought process behind my attempt to answer the question “How can books produce a personal experience?” is to start by introducing the set of symbols I created that serve as a ranking system for books. What if we were to rank books from most personal to least personal? What if they had some sort of warning about how attached you would get to them when you read them? About what sensation and environment they would create? What if the reader got instructions for which setting they should enjoy them in? The ranking system I propose consists of ve levels: Level 1: Purely information or technical Level 2: Informational that connects to a more sentimental topic. Level 3: Personal because it’s an interesting topic. Level 4: Book that went past the pages and brought up emotion. Level 5: Book that created a long-lasting experience in the reader. A system like this would be di cult to implement at the selling point. But it could be a way that a person can divide and organize the books they read. It’s not a very practical way, which is probably why it’s not very popular. But what would happen if we solely viewed

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books as emotion-creators? Don’t we recommend books using this criteria?

Thoughts • When I started to think about what to write, based on a previous project, I thought about books immediately. But what to say about books? Why are they so personal to me? They have always surrounded me, but how can I have such a personal relationship to books when I don’t even like reading that much? Do you need to read books for them to be personal to you? Or is knowing about them enough? How can books create such personal experiences? • The rst thing that comes to mind when I think of books is quiet. How the whole world around you shuts down and your head immerses into the text. The word book feels like a cozy blanket on a cold day. It smells the same as the re burning in a freshly-lit candle. It’s like seeing your bed after a long day on your feet, like waking up to a quiet and sunny Sunday morning. • However, if I were to dissect a book, it’s just a combination of ink, paper, glue and thread. A collage of some sorts. Ink placed in a way that our eyes recognize, that our brains can process and give meaning to. Sometimes ink is not even necessary, and a tactile sensation is the only thing necessary. What transforms a combination of simple materials into something consumable, something worth spending our time with?

• My relationship to books obviously arises from my parents, especially my

1: What ts into the world of books?

mom. Growing up, I was always surrounded by books. My mom and dad both loved to read and were interested about everything in the book world1. They both say that that’s what made me and my sister grow up with a desire to constantly learn about new things. • Something that my parents always laugh about is how during their divorce their only ght was about who took what book. To this day, every time they can’t nd one, their rst instinct is that the other one kept it. Throughout their eighteen years of marriage they still kept a delicate record of which book belonged to whom.

• When I was younger, I always wished that my mom was a doctor, a teacher, or something that made answering the question “What’s your mom’s job?” easier. After a few year’s I decided that the easiest answer was: “She works in anything related with books”. Which is true, she rarely had only one job. She worked in publishing houses, book fairs, festivals, translated books, etcetera. Books were the only way to narrow it down and include all of her jobs and passions.

Book world is a term my mom uses a lot to describe everything that relates to books in some way.

• For a few years when I was younger my mom worked as the director of the Buenos Aires book fair. It would take place in one of the biggest venues in the city for a whole month. Me and my sister would always go during the weekends to see my mom and loved playing around the book stands. We would use it as our own personal playground. We specially liked going to the pavilion that had a booth for each Argentine provinces and collect all of the yers and free stu we could get. It had that “backstage” mystery and exclusivity. • My mom also worked in a non-pro t book festival in which they aimed to make books and knowledge more accessible for underserved communities in Argentina. I remember her talking about how stories teach you how to dream. I had never thought about how I learned how to dream because it’s something that I have done throughout my whole life, but I understand how not everyone can a ord to dream bigger than their lives and imagine what else they would want.

2: To what universe do we travel to when we read?

• Books in my house are not only books, they are a part of the decor of almost every room. My mom has collected so many books throughout her life, she has at least two-thousand. Every time I need to look for a book of my mom’s it is like a maze. She separates them by genre and language and they are scattered all around the house. Thankfully, she’s very organized or if not it would be impossible to nd one. Every time I need one it’s like a little scavenger hunt, and there’s always a point during the search in which I don’t know if she actually doesn’t have it or if I’m just not looking in the correct place. •My parents always remember the time that one of my dad’s friends’ wife said that the books in our house didn’t look good as decoration as they didn’t match. Taking into account that a whole wall in my house’s living room is

3: What if books were everywhere?

lled with books, and that they are my parent’s most prized

possession, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant comment for them. They always say that a er that conversation they lost a bit of respect for this woman. • Bookcases are a topic that’s constantly brought up at home. My sister is constantly reorganizing hers. She inherited my parent’s reading obsession and the amount of times that she reorganizes her book case is the evident proof of this. Her whole room is very messy but her book case is organized so meticulously that she could tell you exactly

where everything is without looking at it.

• Mine on the other hand, is much smaller and organized by color. My family thinks this is an abomination, but most of my books are about design and art. I also don’t have that many and I’m a visual thinker so this helps me know where everything is. There’s more chances I’ll remember a books color than its author.

• I’m talking with my mom and sister on the phone, right before they are about to leave for their respective trips. My sister’s bag is overweight, and my mom’s rst suggestion is for her to remove the books she’s taking from her suitcase and to move them to her carry-on. My sister states that she has no books in her bag. My mom gets a puzzled look, as if this was her only idea to avoid the problem. She doesn’t know what to do now, her problem with suitcases has always been books.

• I’m in Seattle, where my mom is going to live for a while now, and she wants to ‘recreate’ her book collection from back home with just the must-have essentials. At home she probably has over two-thousand books which she obviously could not bring with her across the continent. She did bring a bag of twenty which is still a lot. Her book collection back home has so much character and history since she collected all of these books throughout her whole life. Buying them all together would just not feel the same.

• Today is my mom’s birthday and we decided to spend the day doing whatever she wanted to. She chose to go to two di erent bookstores because that’s what

4: What if I were a collection of books?

she most desired. I like going to the stores even if I don’t necessarily buy anything. I like it because I know how much she enjoys going there with me and telling me about the di erent books she sees. She could spend hours in there, just looking, not even buying anything. She really did teach me how there’s no limit for one’s passion about something. You can’t love something too much. • The second store we went to was called ‘Half Priced Books’, which sells used books that are amusingly cheap. I found a sign that said ’We’ll buy your collectibles’ very curious. Are they still valuable collectibles if someone decides to no longer collect them? Does their value stay the same? • Another thing that shocked me in this store was the amount of books that were for sale there because they had no more use nowadays. For example, I couldn’t imagine who would buy dictionaries and encyclopedias. There’s lots of people that still don’t have access to electronic devices that can present them with these tools digitally, but most

modern charity campaigns are to get computers to children, not books.

• What made me sad in this store was to see all of the children’s books that have lost most of their audience because of all of the TV shows that exist nowadays. I guess that’s also true for adult books but for some reason it makes me sadder for the children’s ones. Probably because I used to read a lot as a kid and really enjoyed it. I remember going to my grandma’s house to read the books that she had, that were obviously more amusing that the ones we had at home just because they weren’t available all the time. • My mom also took me to the Sammamish public library during my time in Seattle. I loved seeing the environment that the library creates. A safe space for everyone in the community to use. It had a re place and lots of places to work and read. They even had tons of yers and brochures that relate to books in a

5: How is the printing press a more personal way of making books?

more indirect way. They are part of this environment that books create, of learning and exploring your imagination.

• My Graphic Design professor shows us a book called Making and Breaking the Grid. I love the design of this book and how useful it is without being a manual. The pdf is clearly a physical book scanned. I want to get the actual book. Why would I do that if I have the pdf already? Is it a waste of money? I don’t think so. Oof, it’s $30… I’ll think about it a little more. • I had to go to a bookstore so I took this opportunity to see if I could nd the graphic design book I wanted. After roaming around the shelves for a long time I found one that was very similar but better and cheaper. I’m thankful I waited and didn’t get the other one as I would have never gotten the joy I felt from getting this one if I had bought the original one I saw in my class. • I was checking how my budget for the month was and how much money I had spent. As soon as I saw that I had spent almost no money I immediately went to Amazon and bought the two books I had been wanting to get. They are artrelated books so they’re not really “necessary” which is why I look at them as an investment. I buy them when I have the money to spare. I am very invested in building my art and design collection of books and have it grow along with me.

• As I grew older, I realized that I didn’t like reading so much anymore. Which, in my family, was something that they really wanted me to do. Later on, I realized

that it’s not that I don’t like reading, I just don’t like reading ction. I do like

6: What if we could get a guide on how to reach our dreams?

reading about design and the fashion world. Because my passion is not reading, it’s fashion and design. • Someone once told me that “it’s very obvious when someone doesn’t read about the eld that they are in”. That phrase really stuck with me as I wasn’t someone who read a lot. This observation, combined with how I tend to pressure myself into being the best I can, is how I discovered that I really enjoy reading about the design world. I do agree with the comment, and I think it includes any type of reading, wether it’s history, biographies, or the relevant news and publications. • I constantly nd myself looking for screen-free at-home activities that I enjoy doing. I always circle back to either reading or some form of drawing or design. Do I need any more than that?

• Most people on my mom’s side have some personal and job-related relationship to books. My grandma and aunt are both psychologists that translate psychoanalysis books from German to Spanish. They constantly have some new collaboration or translation coming out, although they never wrote one themselves. • My grandpa alway’s liked to take me and my sister to book stores. He often expresses his love with gift-giving and taking us to the book store was his favorite activity. We would love going there and being able to choose whatever we wanted to. It was a great time for us to bond and a way for him to stay up-to-date in what our interests were. • Another thing my grandpa did was collect the newspaper covers from the day that all of his relatives were born. He has his own and gave my mom and her siblings theirs. I never got mine but he’s sure he has it somewhere. I’ve

7: What if we were all de ned by a headline?

always been very curious about what was going on in Argentina when I was born, but never looked it up. I’m curious if it comes from a newspaper, not from my Google search. • My two great-aunts, my grandpa’s sisters, wrote a book about our family’s history. They researched in the mormon’s records, who keep a lot of information about ancestors (although my family isn’t mormon). This book is a great way of keeping the family history alive and making it accessible and easy to nd. I don’t know who has the book now, and I have never read it but I really want to.

• I went to the library at school to work today. Libraries always have a peaceful connotation and calm me while letting me staying productive. They are the one of the only places that truly achieve an unanimous silence. They are also quite beautiful and cozy. For example, at school, the library is very decorated and maintained while the cafeteria is

much more chaotic and less taken care of.

• A type of book that is useful but at the same time uncomfortable is recipe books. In my opinion, it’s the easiest way to nd a recipe when you don’t actually know what you are looking for. If I’m looking for something speci c I’d rather look it up online but books are great for inspiration. I’m always scared of staining them while cooking but the truth is that the cleaner a recipe book is, the worse the recipes are. The good ones are used a lot and always get stained.

• In Spanish, there’s a new impulse to use “inclusive language”, in which words are genderless. Spanish is a language in which all of the worlds have a gender, even inanimate objects. Groups are always addressed in masculine even if it’s ten women and one man. Also, non-binary pronouns are way more complicated than in English as there is no gender-free translation for they. Because of this, inclusive language involves a whole new set of words and therefore a new way of writing. There has recently been an increase in published books that are written completely gender free. It’s hard to make this in what is considered a “serious” way because the publishing world goes hand in hand with the language world and this second one still doesn’t approve of inclusive language.

• Last year, I

8: What if we all talked using gender-neutral language?

nally experienced the value of speaking more than one language. I have always been interested in

learning languages and knew that it was valuable for traveling and globalization but I had never actually realized how much it a ects one’s access to information. For a school project, I was working on a topic that didn’t really have a lot of information in English, so I started researching in Spanish. I saw how a whole new set of knowledge present itself to me when I did this. It only made me think how much more I could have available if I spoke any more languages.

• During my last years of high school they made us read short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, who is considered to be the best Argentine writer and one of the best Latin American writers of all times. His work is so iconic, and very hard to understand. He even writes about how hard it is to understand it. It was really a transformative experience as he thinks about literature and writing in a way that I had never encountered before. His writing is a form of art and has since inspired lots of my visual works. • Reading Borges is some sort of rite of passage back home, it’s part of our culture. This semester, during the rst class

I had, as soon as I told my professor I was from Argentina, he immediately asked me if I had read something from

Borges. I found it so impressive that he knew about him and I felt very proud of myself that I could con dently answer that I had.

• I was waiting for my delayed ight at the airport so I went into a little store that had all of those unnecessary things that you want to buy but are essentially a waste of money. I saw a book that I really liked visually but I was not interested in the contents at all. I’ve recently found myself looking at books with a more creative eye probably because I am making a book for one of my classes, so I am constantly 9: Can you judge a book by its cover?

trying to nd inspiration. This one looked handmade with a raw spine that showed the colors of the pages and the

stitching. There’s something about handmade books that fascinates me, specially because of the time and dedication that they take. • As I developed my art, I realized that creating a book is actually not as hard as it seems. Any writing that has pages and a cover can be a book. This project could be presented as a book. And even the publishing part has grown to be more accessible. There are many companies where you can print any type of book you like and have them look professional. Of course, it’s not the same as having a publishing company print and sell your book but it is still very possible. •As a kid, I loved making little books. I would write the weirdest stories and combine them with drawings. My mom still has some of these books that I made and cherishes them a lot.

•My stepsister is in the hunt to get a new bookcase as she doesn’t like her books being on the oor anymore. Her clothes and other things are always laying on the oor but her books shouldn’t. Isn’t that funny? 10: In what way can art arise from books?

•I was talking to one of my friends about this project and he immediately told me about how he writes doodles on a book’s margins when he reads. There’s something very instinctive about scribbling on a page, very unconscious. It can re ect a person’s thoughts while they read or show their lack of concentration or

interest while they do so.

• This also made me consider the problems that e-books have. They are of course, more practical than paper books, as you get millions in the size of a small one. But if practicality were the only factor, bookstores would not exist anymore. Although e-books have caused a fall in the paper book market, both are still circulating. But why? Every book lover I know hates e-books. For starters, you don’t get to physically see how many books you’ve read, you don’t get to see all the knowledge that is now in your brain. You also don’t get the possibility to scribble, to wear o the pages. You can automatically see which books a person has re-read the most by just looking at their library. Paper, because of its fragility, very quickly shows stains and marks of life in it. A physical object carries a history that a digital one can’t so easily.

• I started asking people what they thought about the question I was researching and they all immediately focused in the content of a book. Surprisingly, it wasn’t my rst ‘answer’ for this question but it is one of the most important factors when thinking how a book can create a personal experience • Someone told me that oftentimes, they get inspired in the message of a book or by a quote in it and apply it into the way they live their lives. It made We have to choose what we read very carefully, because we may get life-altering lessons that we didn’t necessarily ask for. • This person’s comment made me think about fables and how when you are a kid, teachers and parents use books to form your vision of the world. Lots of people have read Aesop’s fables, a set of stories that can explain life lessons in a way that a lecture could never. • Also, what we read and resonate with is usually very much related to what’s going on in our lives. A friend told me that “A book can put into words your own experience or feelings”. One can even discover something that they experienced because they read about it in a book. It’s impressive to think how a person can act some way because of what they read in a book but at the same time what they read can re ect how they act.

• I’ve always been a visual thinker, so for me reading a book is to picture the characters moving around in their scene. It’s no surprise that when I was younger my favorite books were Dork Diaries, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Adventures of Thea Stilton. All these series of books had pictures that accompanied the stories. They weren’t picture books per-se, they had a visual aid to communicate the message. I tried to read the Harry Potter books after having watched the movies and some descriptions in the book didn’t match the actor in the movie. This, along with the fact that I already knew what was going to happen, caused me to drop the series and never nish it. • I think that my visual thinking is what makes it so hard for me to concentrate in a story, why I always tend to dri o . • One of my favorite types of books to read are biographies, mostly design-related ones. I feel like I can get inside the

minds of masters in the topic and learn more than I ever could from a textbook. Although it feels so personal and

profound to me it probably isn’t, right? Most of the biographies out there aren’t even written by the person who it’s written about. • Why do I feel like reading a biography gives me more insight into a person’s life than looking at their social media all day everyday? Is it because of how they are written? Is it because we know that social media is fake most of the time? How do we prove biographies aren’t? Why is it that if you look at someone’s social media all day every day, you’re obsessed or a stalker, but if you read all of their biographies, you are ‘cultured’ or ‘interested’?

• I guess that I’ll never have a concrete answer to the question “How can a physical book become a personal object?” But I do have 50 attempts. 11: How can a book connect you to someone that you don’t know?

Appendix: Images

1: Which words t into the world of books?

2: To what world do we go to when we read?

3: What if books were everywhere?

4: What if I were a collection of books?

5: How does the printing press create a more personal process?

6: What if we could get a guide on how to reach our dreams?

7: What if we were all de ned by a headline?

8: What if we all talked using gender-neutral language?

9: Can you judge a book by its cover?

10: In what way can art arise from books?

11: How can a book connect you to someone that you don’t know?

Bibliography Image 1: The New York Review of Books. March 10, 2022. Image 2: Lyons, Martyn. Books, A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011 Image 3: “Union Square Park”, Google Maps, Accessed March 27, https://www.google.com/maps/place/ Union+Square+Park/@40.7371019,-73.990334,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6! 1sAF1QipPEge9gdyOS4lPyL8MajtVePyYTV462g4WvWvlD!2e10!3e12!6shttps: %2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPEge9gdyOS4lPyL8MajtVePyYTV462g4WvWvlD%3Dw129 -h86-k-no!7i2400!8i1600!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c2599f2db306bb:0x2a5c7f9eea6938a0!8m2!3d40.7358235!4d-73.9905215 Image 4: The New York Review of Books. March 10, 2022. Image 5: Wilson, Adrian. The Design of Books. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation: New York, 1967 Image 6: Peoples Wagner, Lindsey. Becoming a Fashion Designer. New York: Simon Schuster, 2019 Image 7: Family picture edited by me Image 8: “10 cuentos cortos para adultos, con explicaciones”, Psicología y Mente, Accessed March 27, https:// psicologiaymente.com/cultura/cuentos-cortos-para-adultos Image 9: Picture taken by me at Elliott Bay Book store in Seattle, WA, USA Image 10: Jennett, Seán. The Making of Books. London: Faber & Faber, 1951. Image 11: Coddington, Grace. Grace: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 2012.