The Book Swap

My husband Shai and I went to the Center for New Words, a well-respected feminist organization, for a book swap earlier this week.

We arrived to find about fifteen people already seated in a circle, describing the books they had brought. Although these were books they were giving away, each person described their books with tenderness. One woman brought a copy of her own memoir.

After we settled in, a few more folks trickled in. There were people of different races, ages and genders. All sorts of books were offered up, including mysteries, feminist nonfiction, queer critiques of the bible and religion, and popular novels. As each book was laid out on the floor, you could feel the anticipation around the room. I whispered to Shai, “this is a lot more fun that I expected.”

But the best part was watching people choose their new books. Each of us held a small piece of paper with a number on it. The facilitator picked numbers out of a basket. As each number was called, the person holding that number got up, walked to center of the circle and picked up a book to take home. My number was called late, so I did a lot of watching.

Some people choose quickly, darting from their chair to snatch up a book from across the room. Others hovered over the books trying to make up their minds, until slowly picking one up from the pile. Sometimes, as the person in the center lifted up their book, others around the circle would murmur “good choice” or “I love that book.”

I also found some of my own prejudices about who reads what being challenged. An older man happily snapped up a book by a well-known feminist political critic. A woman about my own age had her number called early on, so that she had many choices. She proudly lifted up the memoir of the older woman across the room.

The feeling is the room was of happiness, even elation. I shared that feeling, because I have been reading a lot recently, and am always glad to find new books, or receive recommendations from others of books they enjoyed.

The best explanation I have found of why reading is not only pleasurable but also worthwhile is Elaine Scarry’s article, “The Difficulty of Imagining Other People.” She describes how books can help us to feel empathy for a character, and to imagine that character as real. Although Scarry argues that there are definite limits to this empathy, the first time I read her article I was most struck by her articulation of how books allow us to temporarily see life through another person’s eyes.

This stretching-of-the-self is beneficial. One of the principles of Unitarian Universalism is that we are all part of an interconnected web of life. Books can convey the information-the facts-we need to better understand that web. They can also take us a step beyond that, to a level where we can for a few moments really imagine ourselves as someone else. A book might awaken beliefs and feelings we’ve had inside us all along, but were not conscious of. It might help us see things in a new light. After reading a book, we may feel that we ourselves have been changed. In some cases this changed-ness, this sense of empathy, can feel pleasant, exciting or enlightening.

At other times, it can be troubling, as when we empathize with a violent or oppressive protagonist, or when we empathize with a narrator whose beliefs conflict with our own. This can be challenging for us to understand, and raises religious questions about how we are connected to one another, and how we are different.

I really appreciate it when people recommend books to me. If you have any recommendations, please post them here (it will be a kind of cyber-book swap!). Here are a few that I’ve read recently and been moved by: The Time Traveler’s Wife, Tulsa, Never Let Me Go, Prep, On Beauty, and While They’re at War.