There is more than books in my Little Free Library

I don’t just love reading books — I love buying them. A stack of books balanced in my arms as I teeter up to the checkout counter offers me the same dopamine rush that someone else might get from a favorite meal, buying a new pair of shoes or planning a vacation.

It all started at the Village Green Bookstore on Monroe Avenue, in Rochester, New York, back when I was a moody kid. I always wanted — and needed — more than my mom could give me. This was not her fault. No one taught parents about kids with deep feelings back then. ADHD medication was not widely available. And she didn’t have the tools or the time to deal with me. Books filled the gaps between my high demands and my mother’s low reserves.

In my childhood home, we struggled, surviving on what other people didn’t want or need. When my mom put money in the basket at church on Sunday, I prayed we wouldn't need it ourselves hours later for gas money. Often we would. I snapped at her for giving what she could not afford.

But, her generosity extended to me, too — and in just the way I needed. She knew every trip to the bookstore was a panacea. “Let’s go to Village Green,” my mother would say to me on the sour days.

She never rushed me, and when I laid a greedy stack in front of her, unable to choose just one or two, she paid for every book in the pile without a comment or a sideways glance. This memory — her buying me access to other worlds — is how I know she saw me. And that she loved me. Those moments in the bookstore were the only time I got to choose what I wanted, instead of trying to anticipate what I was supposed to do.

So I found kinship in Jo March and her sisters, the siblings in C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia,” Anne of Green Gables and Meg Murry from “A Wrinkle in Time.”’ Meg in her glasses was homely, burdened and anxious, difficult in school perhaps, but still, she had potential. She was going to be something despite her flaws. Did I overidentify? Maybe. I loved Julie Campbell’s Trixie Belden series. I loved Trixie’s tomboyishness. Her mistakes and rough clothing. She was endlessly more relatable for me than Nancy Drew in her sad, chirpy heels.

These stories helped me forget about my too-small tights, unacceptable energy and easy tears. They made me forget that my days could be stormy; I spent a lot of time feeling misunderstood, unless I had a book in my hand.

Decades later, going to the bookstore is still a form of self-soothing, a practiced habit for feeling better. Sometimes I go once a week — sometimes less, sometimes more. But, it is a pick-me-up that has never failed me.

I strongly believe it’s OK  to have countless books in the house — if you have read them all.  But try as I might, I have never managed to read more than 52 books per year, and I only reach that milestone by scrambling most years in December. I intend to read everything I pick, but I either get distracted, or realize a certain title I was really excited about is not for me. I want to read about the history of the Erie Canal. I really do. But an entire book on it turned out to be more than I could manage. Same with a book on Shackelton’s voyage on The Endurance. And when it comes to fiction, I am not a “see it to the bitter end” kind of reader. If I am not in love with a novel after reading a third of it, I put it down.

Last year, I noticed that my overburdened bookshelves were becoming more unread than read. I was risking losing the magic: of becoming just a book consumer, instead of a reader.

A Little Free Library became my solution. There are more than 150,000 of these little public book exchanges you might see in front of a house or on a corner in the U.S., but there wasn’t one too close to our house, so I decided this would be my version of a reader’s carbon credit. I would put up a little book box, and give away my unread books (and some I had read, too).

We put up our library a year ago in August. I resolved to hold virtually nothing back. In the beginning, I put in anything and everything. It took a while, but I learned what people like.

Humor is not something people gobble up, or at least not the humor books I pick. Business books are a dead end, but contemporary fiction gets snapped up in a day or two, at most. I am careful with non-fiction, never putting out anything overtly political, unless you count a couple of autobiographies (Sonia Sotomayor’s and Barack Obama’s).

My own bookshelves are slowly emptying, except for humor and business books. It is a strange thing, to look around and see so much space on the once-crowded shelves. But, I am happier with my books out in the world than I ever would have predicted.

Thankfully, I am far from the only one filling the little library. The neighbors a street over sent bags full of kids’ books, so the children’s shelf is properly stocked. Recently, another neighbor offered access to her massive, wide-ranging library of titles, with so much enthusiasm and generosity that I immediately wanted to befriend her. But, mostly I have no visibility into who donates, I just notice the books appear, nearly every day.

All sorts of people stop and look at what’s in the library. Parents with babies in strollers, people with their dogs. Sometimes people on bikes. I have even seen people in cars stop by, but they do it furtively, and if I happen to be outside, they leave quickly. I wish they wouldn’t. But, chasing them down the driveway yelling, “No, stay. Read!” doesn’t seem right either.

About a month ago, my wife Chris added a three-step slate walkway to the box. We decorated the post with fairy lights for Halloween. We’re trying to decide how to decorate for the winter holidays. And when it snows, we’ll shovel a pathway through the piles the street plow leaves so the snow doesn’t make the library impossible to reach.

And through it all, I think of my mom, who died 10 years ago this fall. She would like that I finally see that she gave me everything she could. And, she would like to know that when we stood up the Little Free Library, we dedicated it in her honor. I never put a book in the box without thinking of her generosity.