Not Unpacking My Library

Boxes of books are a reminder of a lifelong, sometimes turbulent love for the written word

by Jake Marmer

I am not unpacking my library. No, I’m not. I pace around the living room of our newly rented apartment, which isn’t even so new anymore, but it still doesn’t feel like home. In Russian, we say: “Why are you standing there like an impoverished relative?” In Yiddish it’s something about standing around like a golem. I say both of those admonitions to myself, almost out loud, but all of our new things here—couch, bookcases, built-in shelves, fake fireplace—continue to feel foreign to me, and even our old things, the very few we could bring here with us, feel out of context. My doumbek drum functions as a miniature coffee table with a tall stack of magazines and books, and a cup of coffee tilting ominously.

I have moved a lot in my life, too much, and in the chaos that every move entails, in the churning and trashing of possessions, in the reckoning with everything unfinished and forgotten that inevitably rises to the surface, it is the unpacking of books that always served as a kind of a ritual act, an alignment of physical and mental: I’d look at them and feel that I finally landed, that I’m back in the familiar. Even in my parents’ home across the ocean, where I visit a few times a decade—a home where I did not grow up but where they moved shortly after I immigrated in my teens, a home that provokes an oddly sidewise-pointing nostalgia—I feel more grounded as I look at the familiar shelves, the books I grew up reading.

This time around, though, our books are not making me feel content or at home, and that’s why there are still 15 or so hefty boxes stacked atop of each other. There are the Russian books I’ve brought during overseas visits throughout the years, which I never put out on the shelves because out of the four members of my immediate family, I’m the only one who can read these books, and it seems wrong to take up space like that—it’s like sprawling my least comprehensible self across all over the house. In the same box, among other things, there are innumerable volumes of Turgenev from my grandmother’s home, my only physical possession I inherited from her, aside from the pink-gold wedding band, which she gave me the very last time we saw each other, and which I now wear on my pinky when it isn’t too hot outside and it can fit without cutting off my circulation. She had very thin fingers. There is a two-volume memoir of Viktor Shklovsky, which I’ve been wanting to reread since before our move, because this year I am obsessed, as he was, with skaz, a kind of oral storytelling with a book’s binding for a tongue. But Shkolvsky is deep inside a heavy box, and I have not opened it in years, since before our second child was born.

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The War’s Toll on Ukrainian Publishers

An online survey of the Ukrainian book market undertaken by Anastasiia Zagorui on behalf of Ukrainian trade publication Chytomo was conducted from March 26 to April 8. Eighty-one publishers participated in the survey, which examines how the publishing community has adapted to wartime conditions; of those, 10% said they were forced to stop their operations, including 4mamas Publishing House, Abrykos, Booksha, DIPA, Mamino, Oleksandr Savchuk, Osnova Publishing Group, and Smoloskyp. Others, such as Blym-Blym, Ïzhak, and Klio, have been severely compromised. The majority of publishers, 51%, continue to publish but have altered their operating models, taking such measures as reducing their working hours. Thirty-nine percent of publishers had not changed their models when the survey was taken.

In one comment, the team of Creative Women Publishing said that, despite the war, they are back on track with all their projects. “Despite the fact that the publishing house’s employees are geographically dispersed—some have stayed in Ukraine and others are abroad—everyone keeps in touch,” Creative Women reported.

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Comics are their own language with their own syntax and punctuation - like word balloons.

• 4.5/5.0
• going through the started, but never finished text. so happy that i picked this up & believe its testimony to everything at the right time. really didn’t know much if anything at all about the chairman. not only does this text include a brief biography, but also the works of mao & his wife. really an eye opener into the driving force behind his mission. also got a change to brush up on world history as well as marxism, communism, socialism, etc. while reading this text i was so captivated that i watched documentaries, scholarly interviews, & did a bit more research. this book is so short and easy to read that i highly suggest it. although it does its best to set the stage, i could see if someone did not posses the basics of world politics or marxism it could be a bit much, but you wouldn’t be completely lost. 
• another don’t know how it got in the library, but am happy to give it a home. i would suggest borrowing this book, if so moved, yes purchase. however, there may be & probably are better text out there on mao Tse-tung, which i would suggest reading. he is an interesting man. 

[currently]