Books, Regrets, and My Personal Library

I don’t know what I missed more when we left Westport, Connecticut and moved to North Carolina: the family and friends I left behind, or my books, some of which I gave away or sold since my loving wife and daughter convinced me to do to ease the move. Soon after, I wound up buying many of them back, some from the bookstore that I sold them to, some from eBay or Amazon or bookshops in NC where I moved to. 

It was so odd to return to a bookshop, see a book there that I desired or had to have—and then realize that it was a book from my collection that I had sold to the shop months before. I’d then proceed to buy it right back (at three or four times the price of course). 

Lesson learned.

Books have always been a great comfort to me—old friends who have travelled with me to several new homes. I know the history of most of them. The spine alone, visible on the shelf, brings back memories of how I acquired it and of the time and place where I read it, even if I don’t remember everything inside the covers, which is most of the time. 

Some of my books—several volumes on Churchill for example—were left to me by friends from their own collections, willed to me after they passed.

Now, sometimes in the evening when I feel like hearing an old friend or loved one’s voice, or want to look back to another time in my life, I can pick up one of the books in my library and, as John Prine wrote, “I remember everything.”

EJS
September 2026