Tethers: A Traveler's Ode to Book Swaps, Big and Small

Abstract

TethersA Traveler's Ode to Book Swaps, Big and Small SarahBelle Selig (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution A frequent traveler currently winding her way through Central America celebrates the free book swaps along the way, and all the hope and longing nestled amongst their shelves. I'll speak of cathedrals. Of sandwiches and cobblestone, of midnights spent in hot springs and the red sands of the Namib slipping through my fingers. When I return home at last, I will remember most strongly the moments of discovery, of catharsis, of flavor, and share them too often with exasperated loved ones. I will not speak of the books that I read along the way, though they filled the crevices of my days. And least of which will I speak of the bookshelves I found them on, the dusty book swaps in hostel common areas and corner cafés that I frequented, though they too were moments of discovery and catharsis. I will forget them, in time, as they quietly fade to make space for more cathedrals, more natural wonders. But these shelves do not mind the forgetting. Give, take: that is all they ask. [End Page 34] For the perennial traveler, a book swap is more than a minute of respite from the babel outdoors, a freebie when the last of one's coins have been spent on a museum ticket, a street snack, shampoo. A book swap is a new town without a map; a treasure hunt for the sword-shy. If I have the afternoon to linger, a book swap is window shopping the streets of Oaxaca, or selecting the perfect flavor of gelato on a hot day. If I've a bus to catch, or a hangover nestled between my brows, it is frustrating and terribly high-stakes: a fillet knife sliding down the delicate spine of a mackerel. On these shelves, there is no pecking order. Here gathers a ménage of authors who would, in your typical bookstore, live on opposite walls, split by genre and popularity, by surname and sales price. Much like the way I share this cramped dorm room with travelers from South Korea, Argentina, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago; that most private space, shared for one night with people of different languages and histories who would otherwise live a world apart, a single point of contact before we scatter across continents. I imagine the evenings, if these authors whisper to one another like we do, two strange soirées swapping gossip in the dark. Far from the hands of booksellers and publicists, a book swap is a step back in time, before best-seller lists and starred reviews, before book banners flashing bright in our webpage margins. It does not matter who designed the cover or endorsed it on Twitter or how many awards it won. For those of us mad enough to be authors by trade, this is an encouraging thought. It is the book business distilled to its purest form: a writer writes a story, a reader reads it. It is a chance for us—not for sales, nor recognition; the units on our P&Ls will not change—but to finally realize that old dream, to be on the other side of that blessed communion when a young reader finds herself in an author's words and for a moment stops feeling so scared. A book swap is a balm for loneliness. It is here at this altar that two dozen hands from two dozen countries have all left an offering. Because that is what it is, to leave a book for another to find: an offering of oneself, a small fraction of one's hope and longing left like breadcrumbs in the dirt. And when I place my book just so, with a secret kiss to its cover—in that perfect vacancy that book swaps always seem to have, as if they are waiting for just this book to arrive—I imagine the person who will find it, and we are tethered, that reader and I, though we will never know the sound of each other's laughter. We are tethered to each other and to...