Words As Wealth

I grew up middle-class in Louisville, Kentucky. My Dad was a purchasing manager at a local factory (Reynolds Metals Co.), and my Mom stayed home with my brother Craig and me. 

When I was three, we moved into a very green ranch-style home built sometime in the 50s. It had three bedrooms but was only 1,100 square feet. An Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and an Opel Manta with no air conditioning were parked in the driveway. 

I share all of this to compare where and how the Mingus family lived in nearby Seneca Gardens. Their neighborhood was so fancy that its main, tree-lined thoroughfare had a carved wooden sign featuring the community’s name and the head of an Indian brave. That sign might as well have said “You Have Arrived” to my eight-year-old self.

Steve Mingus was a salesman who called on my Dad. He was also the co-owner of whatever company he sold for. I don’t recall my parents having many friends in my childhood, but they regularly socialized with Steve and his wife Tice. As luck would have it, the Minguses had two daughters close in age — both were slightly younger than Craig.

More often than not, the Minguses would invite us to their large, historic Federal-style home for get-togethers. We’d always park behind their Mercedes wagon and a sporty British convertible (I believe it was an MG, but it also could’ve been a Spitfire). 

Compared to our modest residence, Steve and Tice’s house was impressive. The first floor alone had a formal living room, a family room, a dining room, a powder room, a large designer kitchen, and a small library just to the left of the foyer. 

It was that library that captured my attention. Whenever I was at the Minguses’ place, I perused the shelves and made mental notes about the books I wanted to read. While I often dreamed of someday kissing their daughter Nikki, I fantasized about that library far more. I gave up chasing Nikki by my mid-20s, but I’ve never stopped pursuing that library.

At that time, I had a modest collection of books. It slowly grew as I moved from my childhood bedroom to my first apartment to my first home. But it wasn’t until I moved to Denver in 2001 that I had the means and the opportunity to really start building my own library. 

One entire wall of my Lone Tree apartment had built-in bookshelves, and it’s what initially compelled me to sign the lease. It just seemed so adult to the 26-year-old me. As soon as I moved in, I set about filling those shelves. It was a relatively easy task considering the largest bookstore I’d ever seen — The Tattered Cover, four stories and an entire city block — was just 13 miles away. 

When I arrived in Atlanta in 2003, I had enough books to fill two ladder-style bookcases. While my holdings then were mostly novels, over time my collection expanded to include cookbooks, non-fiction, multiple series on graphic design, and all manner of photography books. 

When my ex-wife and I bought our Austin home in 2016, I was giddy to have my own office for the first time since 2002. To celebrate, I purchased three Billy bookcases from IKEA to augment the two ladder-style bookcases I already owned. 

Not long after we’d moved in, I lost several books to a turf war between my cats, Pippi and Monkey. They’d taken to marking the areas they saw as theirs on the upstairs landing. An entire lower shelf of grilling and barbecuing books was collateral damage. I lost even more cookbooks in my 2020 divorce, not to mention my two ladder bookcases.

Fast forward to 2024, and it's time to buy more Billy bookcases. Mine are completely packed, and a few shelves are starting to buckle from the weight. There are now books running across the tops of all three bookcases, and many more are jammed in horizontally above the vertical stacks.   

I presently have 50 books on food and travel, 82 cookbooks, 44 photography books, 25 design and architecture books, and a few hundred novels, memoirs, compendiums, and historical accountings.

I won’t lie; it made me feel proud when my landlord’s property manager said she was in awe of my books the first time she visited my place. That wasn’t everything, either. God only knows what’s still boxed up in my unused spare bedroom. Probably graphic novels and loose issues of comics from both the 1980s and 2010s.

I knew at a young age that a library was the only attainable status of wealth within my reach. I’m not going to realize sudden success at 49 and move into some manse or pick up a ridiculously priced luxury car. This library is my greatest accumulation.

Books, in short, are my treasure. Every unexplored bookstore is my El Dorado, and my home library is Ft. Knox. 

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The most cherished book I own: Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby

My “greatest” recent find: A (used) three-volume hardcover set of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes

A book Monkey peed on that I recently replaced: Barbecue Crossroads

The book I was most recently gifted: None Of This Is True

The book I’ve possessed the longest that I still haven’t read: Les Miserables

The most esoteric book I own: Super Graphic, a book of infographics solely about superheroes

The book I own that’s most likely to stop a bullet: Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas; The Riverside Shakespeare (runner-up)

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My current shopping list: HUMOR Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (Modern Library); Mark Twain's Library of Humor (Modern Library) POETRY Comic Poems (Everyman's Library); Love Poems (Everyman's Library); Dickinson (Everyman’s Library); Auden (Everyman’s Library); Plath (Everyman’s Library); Eliot (Everyman’s Library); Leonard Cohen (Everyman’s Library); Sondheim (Everyman’s Library); Poems of the American West (Everyman’s Library); Poems of the American South (Everyman’s Library); Poems Of New York City (Everyman's Library) FILM & THEATRICAL REFERENCE Mental Floss: The Curious Movie Buff; The Wes Anderson Collection: Isle of Dogs; Whit Stillman: Not So Long Ago LITERARY REFERENCE An Editor’s Burial: Journals and Journalism from the New Yorker and Other Magazines COOKBOOKS Martha Stewart's Cake Perfection: 100+ Recipes for the Sweet Classic, from Simple to Stunning FICTION The Night Manager; Gnomon; Titanium Noir; Lovecraft Country and its sequel; The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds (all Everyman’s Library); His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass (Everyman’s Library); The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest (Everyman’s Library); Cat Stories (Everyman’s Library) NON-FICTION Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 SELF-HELP Why Him? Why Her? How to Find and Keep Lasting Love; The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma; GRAPHIC DESIGN Newspaper Design: Editorial Design from the World's Best Newsrooms; Visual Journalism: Infographics from the World's Best Newsrooms and Designers ARCHITECTURE Bigger Than Tiny, Smaller Than Average; Prefabulous for Everyone; Lake/Flato: Buildings & Landscapes; Lake/Flato: Nature, Place, Craft & Restraint; Lake/Flato Houses: Embracing The Landscape PHOTOGRAPHY William Eggleston: Chromes; William Eggleston: The Outlands; The Open Road: Photography and the American Roadtrip ART Andy Warhol―From A to B and Back Again TRAVEL Paris Like A Local; Dublin Like A Local; London Like A Local; Edinburgh Like A Local; Lisbon Like A Local; Barcelona Like A Local; Rome Like A Local; Seoul Like A Local