Confessions of a Book Arranger (and Rearranger)
by Kat Meads

Here's the humiliating truth: I was a very backward kid when it came to reading. Showed no interest, no initiative, no zeal for the pastime until I was well into my teens. It's a shameful fact for a writer to admit, but there it is. First book I cracked open was my first-grade reader, chronicling the derring-do of Dick and Jane. But since I'd spent the majority of my non-reading time roaming the family farm with various mutts and curs, the only character that truly interested me was Spot.

My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Brumsey, came to class armed with a wad of thick rubber bands that she used to bind the pages of our textbooks, dividing what we were allowed to read from what we weren't -- not just yet. My cousin Linda would have none of that nonsense. With laudable nonchalance she snapped her restrictive bookmark in half and read until "The End," refusing to let anyone other than herself dictate the cutoff of Dick and Jane adventures. At the time, such rule-flaunting left me aghast. Now, what I fix on about that memory is this: why didn't I follow suit?

I did follow Linda to the Bookmobile during summer vacation. And once I stepped inside that close space, lined floor to ceiling with books, the smell of leather and paper so intense not even blooming magnolia could compete, I instantly assumed my church pose: silent, reverent, awed. So many words! So many possibilities! While Linda selected her dozen-plus volumes, I confined myself to lightly tapping row after row of titles. But later, when I finally did check out my own batch, including the hefty Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge, I dumped that load on my bedroom dresser, stood back, stared awhile, then succumbed to an overpowering urge to rearrange. This green binding on top of that dark blue. This slim volume between those fatter two. Hours passed. My cur of the moment whined and scratched at the back door, desperate for attention, but I was otherwise engaged. Falling in love with books, I fell first for their package: the straight-edged, practical beauty, the fineness of form, individually and collectively, top to bottom, side to side.

These days, stumped by a paragraph or a chapter, struggling to create something book-worthy myself, I revert to old devices. Wander over to a bookcase, fix on a section of poetry or prose and start in. Last week, I reordered Anne Sexton's output on a sliding scale of darkness -- not dust jacket darkness this time, but darkness of tone (The Awful Rowing Toward God, The Book of Folly, etc.). Reshuffled Juliet Barker, Muriel Spark, Rebecca Fraser, Edward Chitham, and Mrs. Gaskell biographies of the Brontë clan according to spinal wear and tear. Lined up Ross Macdonald mysteries by Pacific Ocean references (few/several/many). Sorted my Kingsley Amis collection by genre. First editions, favorite heroines, dubious plots, most read, must read -- the categories and options are endless. Best of all, after a bracing session of rearranging, I'm revved and ready for another go at words.

Kat Meads is the author most recently of two short story collections: Not Waving and Stress in America. She has also published a volume of literary essays, Born Southern and Restless. Originally from North Carolina, she now arranges books in California.